


As the Lights Go Down

by standinginanicedress



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, BAMF Stiles, Casual Relationship, M/M, Past Kate Argent/Derek Hale, Spark Stiles, alpha!lydia, but is it?? is it really??, sparks are also known, werewolves are known
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-29 02:21:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 62,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3878530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standinginanicedress/pseuds/standinginanicedress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is standing there looking bizarre – which maybe isn't a very nice thing or even a convincing thing to say about a person that Derek's basically invited over to <em>hook up</em> with (whatever that even fucking means to kids these days) – but he...does. He's wearing dark jeans, a black hoodie with the hood pulled up so Derek can't even really see his face aside from his mouth and jawline, and he's got that metal baseball bat in his fingers again. </p>
<p>He looks like he's come here to literally beat Derek to death. </p>
<p>Then, he grins, lifts one shoulder up in a half shrug, and says, “I can't come in until you invite me.” </p>
<p>Derek is mystified enough that all he can say is, “<em>really</em>?” He thought that was a vampire thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As the Lights Go Down

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [As the Lights Go Down / Когда гаснет свет](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10622859) by [robinjohnblake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/robinjohnblake/pseuds/robinjohnblake)



> This fic was born out of the realization I had that - hold on - I've never actually written Stiles as much of a badass? In the last spark fic I wrote he was so PG it's not even funny; so I guess you could say the entire concept behind this fic is "Stiles Is Really Terrifying and Even Derek Is Afraid." Which is fucking amazing.
> 
> And of course the title is from Sparks Fly - I honestly expect and count on the fact that there have to be 18,000 other spark!stiles fics out there with titles taken from Sparks Fly. I personally haven't read any of them or found one but they must be out there. They _must_ be. If there aren't at least a hundred or so I'm leaving the fandom I s2g don't disappoint me like this it's INSANE how much it fits sterek in a spark au?!?
> 
> Writing Kate in this btw was nuts because I was like - how do I write her as not a crazy psycho murderess who hates werewolves but just as a person who's kind of shitty and treated Derek horribly without getting too dark? I think I might've written her in a way that some people might be able to sympathize with; maybe if you start going down that road, remember her within canon and shake that right the hell off and have a good long laugh at her expense like I did 
> 
> PS posting this fic puts me over the half a million words mark on ao3. Fucking half a million. That's nuts

Derek has a pretty specific night routine. 

He comes home from the office at around six o'clock at night, parks his car in the same exact place, trudges up the stairs, unlocks his front door, and steps inside his neat and organized living room that smells like him and only him, with the comfortable couch that he never uses and the fancy coffee table with a fine layer of dust, and the television he doesn't think he's turned on in months. 

He hangs his keys up on their designated hook (beside a flashlight hanging by a thick string and the spare keys for his car), cooks himself dinner for one while reading whatever book it is he's working his way through this week, does the dishes, takes a shower, pulls on the pajamas he has waiting for him in a neat pile on top of his dresser, and, finally, climbs into bed at 9:30 to watch a documentary on Netflix on his laptop until he's too tired to keep his eyes open, and falls asleep.

This is what he does. It's what he's done, _been_ doing, for the seven months that he's had the job he has, lived in the house he lives in, driven the car he drives. Some Friday or Saturday nights he goes out with his pack for drinks or dinner or bowling or whatever inane activity they feel like dragging him along to this time; fixing him with calculating looks, crossing their arms and saying _so...how are you doing, Derek?_ One can imagine that these outings are not exactly his favorite things on the face of the planet – but he feels first of all _obligated_ to do so because it's his _pack_ and he cares enough about them to suffer through it for their sake, and second of all _shitty_ because he should be seeing them a lot more often. He should be inviting them over to his place to host movie night, or cooking them all dinner, like the rest of them do on rotation for him all the time. 

But he doesn't do that sort of stuff anymore. He used to, all the time. He remembers a pretty specific night when he had the pack over to play Monopoly and they were up until four am, everyone glaring at each other, snapping and snarling and growling until Scott lost it and flipped the entire board over before lunging over the coffee table to try and choke Isaac out instead of paying the five hundred dollar fine for landing on Park Place. Or the time Kira suggested a water balloon fight in Derek's backyard; Lydia lounging in a pool chair bathing in the sun with her sunglasses on, Scott nailing Derek in the head over and over again with pink balloon after pink balloon, Isaac climbing up a tree to get away from Kira's painfully strong water balloon throwing talents. 

He thinks about those times some nights and thinks _I should get back to that – I really should start doing things like that again, start being normal again, go back to how everything was._

It's been seven months. So he should be doing shit like that again. Seven months is above and beyond the usual time allotted to get over something, right? Derek's not sure how the timeline works, he's never personally experienced it before – but the past seven months have felt long and endless and he _should_ be feeling better by now. 

And, yeah. He guesses he feels " _better_ ". Has stopped waking up expecting there to be a body in bed next to him, has stopped buying food for two people, stopped thinking about starting a family, bought himself a less practical car. That's moving on, right? When you stop doing the kinds of things you would've done with them, when you burst out of your old routine and create a new one based solely around yourself? That's what _over it_ is, right? 

It's just...some nights he picks up his phone and dares himself to press down on her contact information, on _call_ , just to see what's going on with her. If she's doing much better with whatever new life she's built for herself after she cut Derek out unexpectedly and left her ring on the kitchen table like she couldn't stand the sight of it anymore, didn't want the reminder. If she's got someone else. Still with the person she left Derek for in the first place. 

Scott and the rest of his friends (pack) have assured him time and time again to not look. Don't call, don't stalk Facebook, don't google, don't talk about her with old mutual friends (as if there were any of those left – she pretty much took all of their shared friends with her in the divorce), just don't. It's better to not know. It is much better to wonder than it is to _know._

Derek doubts that, but does as his friends say, and puts the phone down every time. Decides he's not over it, might never be, and would that be okay? Would it be okay to never get over the fact that he was with her for eight years from the time they were just kids in high school up until she just left? Out of nowhere? Christ, Derek was planning on how to ask her to stop taking her birth control and fantasizing about whether it would be a girl or a boy, while she was seeing someone else behind his back. After eight. Fucking. Years.

Would it be _okay_ to never get over that? 

All the same, even though he's sometimes so lonely that it wakes him up in the middle of the night, even though all he wants to do sometimes is stand up from his desk at work and shout _I fucking quit_ , even though he wants to have nights with the pack that aren't all centered around how _he's_ doing and how _he's_ feeling, he just feels...stuck. Trapped. He had to do something with himself after Kate left, absolutely fucking had to, and he thought the best way to do it was to keep himself busy at all times. Every second of his days were planned out; breakfast, work, drive home with audio book, up the stairs, dinner, dishes, shower, Netflix, bed, start over again in the morning. 

It worked for as long as he needed it. There's a certain feeling that comes along with soulcrushing heartbreak, like getting out of bed is fucking impossible and going out and facing everyone and seeing their looks of pity because they all _know_ is gag-inducing, like being a normal person is almost unimaginable. Having a routine, forcing himself up every morning at exactly the same time so he wouldn't get off schedule...that worked for him. 

The problem is that, now, he can't get out of it. Like he's gotten himself out of the initial heartbreak funk and has created an entirely new funk to deal with the old funk and it's just this vicious fucking cycle he cannot escape from. Some nights he picks up his phone, out of routine entirely, thinks about calling Scott, knowing his best friend would come running over in a heartbeat to do whatever impulsive thing he felt like doing with a smile.

But then he can't make himself do it. He has no idea why. 

He has a very specific routine, and he sticks to it, and it's fucking horrible. He hates every second of the ludicrous documentaries on Netflix (who cares about the life of a guy who was in an idiotic viral video once in 2005? Who _cares_?), he fucking despises the things he makes for dinner (chicken and broccoli again?), he detests his job so much that it is a physical effort for him to not dismantle the place brick by brick with his bare hands every time his phone rings and he has to deal with a client. Every single second of his life is filled with nothing but routine, and bored, and waiting for something to happen. 

Until. 

He's sitting at his table with a copy of The Iliad (and what the fuck? He _hates_ this god damn piece of shit book who cares if it's classic this isn't tenth grade English class), spearing into his white rice and beef stir fry, shoveling it into his mouth and barely tasting it, the sound of the clock in the living room ticking the only noise in the entire house. This is typical, for him, of course. 

What's not so typical is looking up halfway through a page after hearing the sound of some kind of fight going on out on the street. Raised voices, and feet stomping down porch steps, and the very distinct scent of anger and misery pooling in the air so thick that Derek expects to look up and see some miserable creature standing in his very house. 

He shouldn't eavesdrop. He should _not_ eavesdrop on some fight that his neighbors are having. 

But it's sort of hard when you're a werewolf and sick of reading your shitty book to not at least _sort of_ listen for entertainment. 

“...I knew it the entire time!” 

“it wasn't what you thought it was, I swear, I – HEY! _Hey_ , don't you fucking dare -” 

There's a smash, a really fucking loud one, too, so Derek assumes that whatever the other person in the argument wasn't supposed to be doing has been done. Judging from the cry of terror and disbelief, he's guessing it was a very, very shocking thing that just happened. 

He can't help himself. 

Derek stands up from the table, pulls his undone tie completely off his neck and drops it beside his abandoned dinner, and walks over to his front window to glare past his porch to see what's going on out on the street.

The first thing he sees is a gangly looking kid with a metal baseball bat, waving the thing around in the air while yelling something about _and to think I thought I was going to marry you!_

The second thing he sees is his next door neighbor, some human named Chris who wears tie-dye shirts and hemp necklaces and purses his lips whenever he sees Derek with his plastic grocery bags (as if Derek's actions alone are what's going to ultimately damn the entire planet to a fiery hell), with no shoes or shirt on, pants barely hanging onto his hips. 

The third thing he sees is Chris' car, the one that's always parked right behind Derek's. But, this time, it's got a huge dent in the hood, and a gigantic crack in the windshield. Derek flicks his eyes back to the kid with the baseball bat, and thinks he knows exactly what happened there, the crash and indignant scream suddenly making sense. 

“I'm telling you it was an accident,” Chris is shouting now, trying to step closer to the guy he's arguing with – but the latter holds the bat out threateningly in his direction, like he'll seriously use it against Chris' temple, and Chris freezes, holding his hands up in surrender. 

“An accident?” The kid repeats, screams, really. Derek imagines that the entire neighborhood is standing at their front windows right now watching this shit go down, whispering to each other like _golly, Martha, these kids out here!_ Chris, for one, looks hyper-aware of this fact, nervously flicking his eyes at all the houses on the block – but the other doesn't appear to give even half a shit about the kind of public scene he's creating. “An accident? So! Some other guy's lips just _accidentally_ wound up on your _dick_?” Also doesn't care about what kind of personal, inappropriate details the entire block hears either. 

“That's not what -”

Apparently fed up with listening to Chris' voice, he raises the bat and thwacks the left-side mirror clean off the car with a _crack_ , and Derek gapes. This is quickly turning into the most exciting thing that's happened to him in months, and it's not even happening to _him_. He's just on the sidelines, experiencing it, like he just got into the most dramatic and action packed film of the year without even having to buy a ticket. 

Chris shouts again, and the kid shouts back, and then it just dissolves into nothing but a screaming match in the dead center of the road. Thankfully, the bat gets ripped out of his hands and tossed aside with a bizarre crackling noise, so Derek doesn't have to worry about watching someone's head get cracked open right in front of his very eyes; but that doesn't mean the fight is winding down. Not at all. It just appears to be getting worse, even with the car destroying no longer part of the equation. 

They're in each other's faces, screaming things like _maybe if you weren't so fucking annoying and freaky all the time_ , and _I can't believe you'd do this to me_ , and then _well it's not like I'm getting it from you lately, am I_ , and Derek feels like he should probably look away from the window, stop listening in as much as he is, try to tune them out with ear plugs. This is clearly a personal argument filled with many personal details that Derek has absolutely no business knowing no matter that they're in the middle of the street screaming them at each other. 

Chris shoves his (ex?) boyfriend, hard enough that he stumbles backwards several steps on lanky legs, and Derek thinks it's actually a good thing that he didn't look away from the window and blast music to tune them out, just in case it starts getting physical. 

He watches the kid catch his footing underneath the streetlights, and then surge forwards, holding his own arms out, shoving Chris right back. The streetlights above their heads flicker for a second, ominously, but neither of the two men outside pay any attention to that whatsoever, like it's normal. 

First of all, Chris might be a bit douchey and lame, but he's sort of...built. Derek has run into him at the gym several times before and he's not exactly pushing light. His boyfriend is sort of... _not_ built. At all. From here, Derek thinks that both of them are human, so they're evenly matched in that regard, except that they're not really evenly matched in any other regard; the other kid is tallish, but is skinny and lanky and looks like he's never once in his life punched someone in the face. If it gets any worse than this, Derek has a pretty good idea of who'll be winning the fight. And it won't be a pretty win either. 

Chris grabs a fistful of the smaller guy's shirt, holding him in place, and Derek decides he doesn't feel like calling the fucking police and dealing with being a witness, so he acts on principle. He flies out the front door with wolf speed, leaping over the steps, and in no time he's approaching them close enough to shout _HEY!_

Both of them flick their eyes over to Derek as he gets closer and closer, and that's when Derek notices that the smaller guy is _not_ human; not at fucking all. Now that he's close enough to smell something aside from the anger and tears and all, he can smell _spark_ so strong that it nearly knocks him over. 

The realization makes Derek feel like laughing. Chris is lucky, then, that his boyfriend only decided to take a bat to his car, when he could've just as easily set the entire thing on fire with a flick of his wrist if he felt like it. Laws put in place to control sparks' magic usage aside, get one of them pissed enough, and they'll risk incarceration without even batting an eyelash. Or, at least that's what Derek's heard. 

Derek approaches them with his hands out in a placating gesture, says, “let's break it up, guys,” in his most diplomatic voice. “I don't want to call the cops.” 

Chris looks down at his hand in the spark's shirt, like he's surprised to see that he was just about to go that far, and swallows before releasing the bunched up fabric with a sigh through his nose. Again, Derek thinks it's a good thing he was paying attention to this, otherwise things would've escalated way farther than either of them probably wanted. Granted, there's still a busted up car three feet away from them, but...could've been way worse. 

The spark staggers backwards away from Chris, closer to Derek, so the scent of him is stronger and thicker, more centralized – caramel, Derek thinks. Caramel and a bit of coffee and ash and maybe a forest after it rains. Not a bad scent. “We're done,” he says with finality, voice raw and broken up from the shouting, and also most likely the fact that there's a steady stream of tears flowing down his cheeks that he's making no attempt to stop or swipe away. He bends down and picks up the discarded bat, lets it dangle limply in his fingers. 

“Stiles, come on, it wasn't -”

“ _Done_!” The spark, _Stiles_ , repeats in a harsher growl, whirling around for a second to fix Chris with a frightening glare; his eyes fade into purple, just for a couple of seconds, and Derek can't help but stand there and stare at him. He's not met many sparks outside of the farmer's market, and he's definitely not seen many of them let their sparks show through their eyes like that (it typically only happens when they're really pissed, like right now, or when they're actually using their power – seeing as how most sparks are pretty happy-go-lucky people and are regulated pretty heavily on when they can or can't use their magic, Derek's only seen it a handful of times), and he's never seen _purple_ before. 

It's a bit mesmerizing, actually. 

Stiles turns back around after Chris sighs in defeat, and when he looks directly at Derek his eyes are back to a regular old human brown, rimmed in red with tears still spilling. Derek can't help but involuntarily take a step back at having this spark stare _directly_ at him, and he winds up hopping backwards onto the grass island beside the sidewalk, while the spark just advances closer and closer to him with that ridiculous baseball bat in his fingers. 

Derek's never felt _this_ kind of physical reaction to a spark before. He's made eye contact with them before, of course, spoken to them every now and again, and it's been pleasant, mostly. 

But this? This is actually kind of...freaky. He feels the need to turn tail and run into his house, lock the door behind him. 

Behind them, Chris is wandering back to his house, looking over his shoulder dejectedly at his now ex-boyfriend with a frown on his face, and Derek decides it's easier to focus his eyes on that instead of Stiles. 

But eventually, Chris is inside, and it's just him and a hysterically crying spark with a bat alone in the evening air. 

Stiles looks pretty content to just walk off down the sidewalk, sniffling and trying to catch his breath, fumbling around his pocket and pulling out his cell phone. 

Derek scratches at the back of his neck. He feels somehow involved in this entire thing, even though all he really did was break it off before it became a police case, and he feels sort of...bad? Watching the kid cry and walk off into the night, clearly without a car or even a ride home anymore now that he and Chris are done...

Defenseless is not a term one usually ascribes to sparks, not at fucking all; but he doesn't look great. Who wouldn't feel at least slightly compelled to help a kid who can't be older than twenty all by himself and crying after apparently having been cheated on by a boyfriend? 

Derek sighs when the spark is a few paces away from him, and says, “hey,” prompting Stiles to turn his head and look back at him, pausing mid-step. Again, the hairs on the back of Derek's neck stand up at being _looked_ at like that, even without the purple eyes, but he powers through it. “Do you...do you need – help?” 

Stiles sniffles, stares blankly at him. 

“...a ride home?” 

Luckily, the silence ends, and Stiles shakes his head. “No – I have a friend.” Pause. “Thank you, though, that's nice.” Another pause, and this time, Stiles turns his body around to face Derek; he casts his eyes downwards as he works a thumb over his phone, presumably writing out a text to the aforementioned friend. “...and, um – sorry.” 

Derek blinks. “Sorry...?”

The sparks' lips quirk, and he looks up, right into Derek's eyes again. Derek plants his feet firmly on the ground, setting his jaw tight. There's something in those _eyes_ that just...“Yeah. Sorry you had a front row seat to my break-up.” 

“Yeah...” Derek says slowly, looking away from Stiles, unable to stand under his gaze for too long; he wonders how Chris or anyone else could literally even _stand_ it. “It was – well.” 

“Embarrassing,” Stiles clarifies for him as his phone buzzes in his hands. When he looks down to read the text he received, Derek takes the opportunity to look directly at him, again, traces his eyes over the slope of his nose, the freckles on his face, the erratic mop of brown hair on top of his head. 

_Attractive_ , his mind supplies, and the thought is a bit surprising. Of course he's found people attractive since his divorce, of course he's watched porn and jerked off and all that good stuff – he's not been repressing himself out of sexual thoughts and actions, or anything. But, that being said...it's been a long time since he's been this affected by a person's looks. 

Must be the spark thing, he thinks to himself, watching the kid's thumb tap deftly. The caramel coffee rain-bark smell and the looks together, that must be it. 

“You ever think – fuck it?” Stiles continues on, finishing his text and lifting his eyes to glare at Derek's house, then down the street. “Like, you spend seven months of your life on a person -” or eight years, “...and then they go and fuck you over and it's like...why not just _fuck_ it?” 

Derek clears his throat. He knows _fuck it_ very well, as a matter of fact – although maybe not put in such infantile terms. He knows the feeling of _why not just be alone forever_ , of _this shit just isn't fucking worth it_ , of feeling like he'll never be able to trust anyone again, so just...why try? He doesn't say any of this out loud, knows it's not his place and a random spark wouldn't give a shit about Derek's emotional problems. “Sure.” 

Stiles runs his fingers through his messy hair and scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Every living person is a massive disappointment,” he sniffles through his words, finally wipes the residual tears off his face, and then he shrugs nonchalantly. “Whatever. Is it okay if I wait here for my friend to pick me up?” A long finger points to the curb right in front of where Derek's Camaro is parked, and then Stiles just stands there and waits for an answer.

Derek scratches the back of his neck again. “It's – public property,” he finds himself, fucking idiotically, saying this like Captain Obvious. “You can do whatever you want on the street.” 

This is the stupidest thing Derek's ever said, but all the spark does is nod his head and step through the small patch of grass to plant his feet on the concrete, squat down and plop himself onto the curb, stretching his long legs out in front of him with his bat resting on the ground. He looks content to just stay there without Derek's company, and again Derek finds himself rubbing at the back of his head, unsure of if he should say or do anything else. 

He's spoken to sparks before. In passing, mostly; like an _excuse me_ on the street, or small talk in an elevator, or at the Farmer's Market in the summer time where a bunch of the sparks sell baked goods and other odd homemade trinkets, weird balms and magic whatevers, all smiles and pleasant scents. But the reality is that sparks sort of...run in different social circles. Different life circles altogether; so he's not entirely sure how to have a for real conversation with one of them. 

Stiles glances at him again, a small smile on his lips, and breaks the silence himself. “You don't have to wait with me. I can handle myself pretty well without a werewolf standing guard.” 

Derek knows that to be true beyond any shadow of a doubt. Knows that if anyone came over to bother him, try and fight him or hurt him in any way, Stiles could easily whip them backwards and away from him with a burst of invisible energy strong enough to send body builders flying, knows that if anyone touched him without his permission, they might wind up getting electrocuted and half-fried to a crisp. 

It's not worrying about the spark that has him hesitating. He's actually not entirely sure what _does_ have him hesitating, why he's still standing there. Maybe it was the break in routine. As if now that something aside from the monotony has happened, now that he's gotten the novel experience of encountering a real live spark in the flesh, he's dreading the thought of having to jump right back into his boring house and his boring bed and his boring Netflix documentaries. 

Or maybe the spark just smells that good, that he's not looking forward to going back into his house that smells like him, and only him. 

Either way, he clears his throat and says, “yeah, okay. Er – goodnight?” 

Stiles smiles, a real one this time, eyes crinkling at the corners, and gives him a two fingered wave, before facing forwards and staring dead ahead to wait. 

Derek goes inside of his house and draws the curtains so he won't spend the next twenty or so minutes staring out the window at the spark; mostly because he thinks they have some way of knowing when they're being watched (maybe not super hearing or super senses like Derek but more of a mental thing; they're all connected to energies and sensations and stuff, not that Derek would know a god damn thing about it). And he doesn't want Stiles to think he's a gigantic creep or something, leering at the nice-smelling spark like some fucking perverted wolf. 

Instead, he does the dishes, and hears it when a car pulls up outside his house, when a car door slams, when the sound of an engine revving disappears around a corner to go down another block. And then he goes upstairs, forgets the shower, has no interest in picking up his laptop to watch any stupid documentary. 

He lays in bed in the dark, head on his pillow, staring at the ceiling, thinking. Something he really hasn't allowed himself to do since Kate left him, because staring at the ceiling and thinking usually always lead to him wondering what exactly it was that he did wrong, where he failed as a husband, memories of things they did together, on and on, intrusive and never ending. He watches the boring documentaries so that by the time he's alone with his thoughts, he's too tired to think too much, and falls deeply into sleep. 

Now, he hardly thinks about Kate. He wonders what kind of things the spark can do, why he had that baseball bat to begin with, if he had to go to that mysterious spark academy out in the remote woods in Washington, what kind of stuff _goes on_ at the spark academy – it's all things he's never really thought about, because again, no spark has ever really made a lasting impression on him.

No spark has ever looked into his eyes like that, got the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, made him want to grab, and touch, and _feel_ whatever magic is running through their veins. 

He thinks about it for hours, unable to get to sleep. 

In the morning, he oversleeps and doesn't have time for breakfast.

\----

Derek is at the bar. His least favorite place on the planet; he's always hated loud places with tons of people, lots of colors that make him squint his eyes, and the bar is definitely no fucking exception. It's this place that most members of his pack fucking love because it's all so hip and they're all twenty one and twenty two years old and they like drinking and dancing and meeting people to make out with for fun. If it were eight months ago, Derek would have made up an excuse to not come out, and Scott would've dirty-looked him and then gotten over it in seconds, and then Derek would be through with the entire ordeal.

Since he's apparently a charity case that everyone needs to look after and feel sorry for, and he needs to be forced to have a good time for once, he couldn't get out of it. Lydia picked his clothes out for him and paraded him out the door while he had absolutely no fucking say in the matter, and now he's sitting at a table with Kira and Isaac, drinking some ridiculously named blue monstrosity, listening to the two of them chatter about some television show they both watch while trying his hardest to block out the noise of the bass thrumming from the speakers all around his head; it's absolutely no use, of course. 

They all only mean well, Derek knows. They all only care about him and want to see him doing better, and they think the way to do it is to force him to come out with them and do the kind of shit that would make _them_ all feel better were they feeling down. Getting black-out drunk and grinding with some random person they'll never see again in their lives? That's just how the rest of his pack detoxes with whatever problems they have. 

Derek, on the other hand, has no idea how he deals with his problems. He wouldn't call what he's been doing for the past eight months _dealing_ , not by a long shot. All he knows is that this place? With the fucking lights and music and people? This is not working for him. 

But, he sits there, and he drinks his drink with a grimace, and when Scott bounds over and asks Derek to come up to the bar with him to get new drinks, he goes along with it with a small smile. 

They lean up against the side of the bar, waiting for the bartender to finish up whatever she's doing to ask them their orders in comfortable silence with one another, until Scott's eyes zero in on something behind Derek's head, and he grins.

“Hey, check it out!” He says a bit excitedly, tapping on Derek's shoulder again and again and pointing a tan finger behind him. “Spark!” 

This reaction is actually pretty common, and not just from dopes like Scott McCall. Like Derek has said, a spark in a public setting is pretty novel – wolves especially get excited about spotting one of them because they're so neat and smell so nice and are always willing to do a cool little _legal_ trick for anyone who asks (sometimes illegal, as well, if you bribe them with enough cash). Not unheard of, but it's sort of like a pack of Starburst. The world is full of reds and yellows, the pinks few and far between. 

But _everyone_ likes the pink, right? 

Derek turns his head to get a look at the spark himself, and he almost chokes on his own spit when he sees Stiles standing there leaning up against none other than _Allison fucking Argent._

Of all the people – of all the gin joints in all the world – of all the scenarios he's ever imagined in his head? Running into the spark he helped out two or so weeks ago at the horrible bar along with his ex-wife's niece was never actually one that he thought could possibly be an actual thing that could happen. He feels this bizarre mix of excitement and horror, relief and nerves, all bungling up inside of him together for a cocktail of confusion, just staring with a dropped jaw in Stiles' direction and - 

...oh he never should've been doing that. You don't _stare_ at sparks because they _know_ , god dammit, they have, like, _powers_. 

Stiles' shoulders hunch, suddenly, and he turns his head and stares directly into Derek's eyes without having to scan the crowd or anything. As if he knew exactly where Derek was without even having to fucking look first. 

Eerie is one word for it. Absolutely horrifying might be another. Just like last time he looked into the spark's eyes, Derek can't help but feel like he's seeing something he shouldn't be, looking at something he has no fucking right to look at. It's not a very nice feeling, all things considered. 

It gets even weirder when Stiles' face splits into a grin, when he latches onto Allison's wrist and starts pulling her along in Derek's direction – and, worst of all, Derek has nowhere to fucking run. What's he going to do? Leap away from the bar and start fighting his way through the crowd to run away from the fucking spark just because his ex-wife's niece is there, as well? Scott and the rest of the pack would call that the definition of _avoidance_ , would say that Beacon Hills is a teeny tiny town and he has to get used to running into Argents because it's never going to stop. They're all really nice and pleasant when he does. After all, he's not the reason the marriage ended in a crash-burn type of way; they know that, and probably just feel sorry for him.

Somehow, that's even worse.

So, when Stiles comes to a stop in front of him and Allison is standing there two feet away, he's not surprised to see an uncomfortable, sad look on her face. She was always nice to him, but she was also always a teenage and young adult girl who didn't really blip on his radar screen much aside from Christmas and Thanksgiving. He has no idea what to say to her now, just like he never knew back then either. 

Scott looks just about ready to start screaming in excitement as he comes to stand directly beside Derek, inserting himself in a conversation that hasn't even started yet, grinning at Stiles like the spark's just crawled off of a rainbow with a pot of gold in his arms. 

“Hey!” Stiles says, and he looks to be in much better spirits than he was when Derek saw him last. Tear-free, not reeking of anger; just caramel and coffee, mixed in with just the slightest hint of...drunk. Not surprising, considering the setting and the fact that he had a blowout of a breakup not too long ago. “You're that guy!” 

Derek nods his head, and Scott looks at him like _what guy?!?!_ , and Allison shifts uncomfortably. 

“What's your name?” The spark leans in closer, eyes bright in the neon lights, and again, Derek cannot fucking fathom how anyone can stand to have this spark looking at them like this; why Allison can just stand there in her pretty dress and not even bat an eyelash, while the closer Stiles gets to Derek, the more he feels like he's crawling out of his skin. 

“Derek,” he manages to say over the power radiating off of Stiles in waves. 

He smiles. “Derek! And?” He points to Scott, and, as expected, Scott's hand shoots out instantaneously like he's been waiting for this moment from the second he saw the spark from across the room. 

“Scott!” He says, and when Stiles puts his hand in Scott's, the wolf literally jerks. It's as if he's been electrocuted, and for a second Derek is genuinely worried, but then Stiles drops his hand and smiles after saying his own name, while Scott has this dazed expression on his face; if Derek had to place it, he'd say it looks a lot like...a post-orgasmic bliss face. The thought is hilarious. 

“This is the guy!” Stiles says, taking his attention away from Scott and turning to Allison, now, who visibly grimaces. “The one who stopped me from blowing Christopher up!” 

It's really, really incredible to hear someone that looks like Stiles – with huge bambi eyes and a grin a thousand watts bright and a plaid shirt – mention blowing a person up without even batting an eyelash. 

Derek knows that he could've, and possibly would've, blown his fucking ex-boyfriend up had no one stopped him in time. 

He starts talking again, saying to Derek, “and this is my friend -” with a finger pointed in Allison's direction, but she cuts him off before he can finish. 

“We know each other, actually,” and her voice is thick, sloppy. She's had a lot to drink. 

Stiles blinks in surprise, _delight_ might actually be a better word for the expression that crosses his face, and shouts, “how!?”

Derek isn't going to say it. He's already coming up with an excuse like _oh, our families know each other_ , which isn't a lie at all – his mother and Allison's mother still talk on the phone quite a bit; but apparently Allison is drunk enough that she has no idea that bringing it up would be a fucking horrible thing to do, because she just flat out leans into Stiles and says, “this is my aunt's ex-husband.” 

Derek honestly didn't know what reaction he expected. From near everyone else, it's always a cluck of the tongue and _ooohh...how horrible, how sad, what a shame, are you okay?_ Which is, Derek thinks, actually a perfectly reasonable and normal way to react to something like that? Any sane person would react that way. 

Stiles, on the other hand. 

His entire face just _lights up_ , he throws his head back in _joy_ , and when he comes back down to look Derek directly in the face, he says, “dude! Your wife left you!” 

Scott laughs. Probably because it's the single most ridiculous thing that anyone has ever, ever said to Derek, and even he has to admit if he weren't the target of it, he'd probably chuckle a bit to himself, as well. As it is, he is the target of it, and he's very confused, and Allison is way too drunk and should probably go home, and Stiles isn't fairing much better himself, so all Derek can do is shift his eyes in-between them again and again, wondering where Stiles is going with this. 

“That's great!” He says, and Derek feels like walking away. Stiles must be able to sense this, the way he senses everything, because he reaches his hand out as if to touch Derek on the arm, hold him down, but just leaves it hovering in the air between them. Even from inches away, Derek can feel a current of energy, can almost hear a thrum, a drumline pounding, reaching out towards his skin. It's actually a bit of a struggle to not close the distance between Stiles' fingers and his arm, but he manages it. “No, no, no, I don't mean – I don't mean _yay your wife left you, you piece of shit!_ I mean like – I just broke up with the worst guy ever, and you had a shitty wife...sorry Allison.”

Allison makes a face like _nah, that's fair_. 

“...and now here we are!” 

There's a train of thought that Stiles is going down. To him, this must be a very clear train, because he sounds very confident and sure of himself, smiling and beaming underneath the neon lights of the club. But Derek has no idea where this train is going. Part of him desperately wants to hop off the train, and another part is just trying to hang on for dear fucking life because he kinda wants to find out where he's about to end up with this spark. “Um...”

Like he can sense the wolf's confusion, he puts his drink down on the bar beside where they're all standing in a small group, and fixes Derek with another look. “I've got, like, a new philosophy.” 

“Okay.”

“Remember what I said to you outside of your house that night? Fuck it?” 

Derek does remember; he's thought a lot about that night, as a matter of fact, but he's not about to admit that much to Stiles out of embarrassment, so he just nods. 

“I've just decided I'm over it!” He leans in even closer, so close that it wouldn't take much more than a twitch for them to be touching skin to skin, and Derek has to swallow just for something to distract him. Scott and Allison start having their own conversation, and Derek is picking up a word here or there of small talk, while desperately trying not to look Stiles directly in his eyes. “I'm not doing that kind of stuff anymore.” 

“What kind of -”

“Dating,” Stiles clarifies before Derek can finish asking. “I'm not dating or doing relationships anymore! Fuck it! And I'm guessing you don't want to get married again anytime soon, either.”

“Not at all,” Derek says honestly; because – well. Fuck that.

Stiles snaps his fingers at him, right in his face, smirks, and says, “that's my philosophy.” 

“Your philosophy is that you're not dating anymore...?” 

“My philosophy is,” Stiles picks his drink back up, takes a long sip in-between his sentence. “...I'm twenty-one years old and I should be having fun.” 

Derek nods, up and down, mostly just because he thinks he should be following this. He isn't. 

“Relationships aren't fun, as you know.” Boy, oh boy, does Derek ever know just how very not fun relationships have turned out to fucking be. “And that's why I think you and I should have sex.”

It's a very, very good thing that Derek didn't have a drink in his hand the moment that Stiles said that, because, werewolf reflexes or not, the entire glass would've been shattered on the floor right now. It would have just slipped clean out of his fingers like a slippery eel, down onto the ground, with the rest of him most likely. Beside him, Scott laughs again, incredulously, like he's just heard that entire thing and cannot for the life of him believe it. 

Derek honestly can't, either. “What?” 

“I know you're attracted to me,” Stiles says easily, and Derek feels like blushing. He really wishes he had read more about sparks or met more of them, so that he doesn't have to be standing here finding out that they can sense arousal or sexual interest or even romantic interest as easily, if not possibly better, than wolves can. “And I think you're good looking.” 

“Well -”

“Here,” Stiles produces a pen from out of literal nowhere – and that's not just a figure of speech. Derek means that one second there was nothing in Stiles' hand, and the next, there is, just like that, and the wolf can do nothing but stare wide-eyed as a post-it note appears from thin air on the bar in front of him. The spark leans over it, scribbles something with his magic pen (and it's a fucking glitter gel pen for Christ's sake), and then hands it over to Derek with another one of his grins. “I'm drunk – call me when I'm not.” 

This is, without a doubt, without any single fucking _doubt_ , the most surreal conversation he's ever had. And that's including the one where Kate sat him down and told him she was leaving him for someone else; so the bar was set pretty fucking high already, and Stiles is just launching himself above it like it's nothing to him. For starters, the spark moves so fast through words, through the points he's making, through everything, that it feels like just seconds ago that Scott was pointing over Derek's shoulder and saying _spark!_

How the literal Hell did it end up like this? How in the fuck is Stiles' hand hovering in-between them with his phone number on a post-it note waiting for Derek to take it? Derek can't think of the chain of events, can't make sense of anything that just happened. 

His mind is working on autopilot, so he takes the phone number out of Stiles' hands and avoids touching his fingers. Scott looks absolutely fucking delighted, while all Derek can do is stare down at the post-it with wide eyes. It smells (and somehow, feels) like magic. 

“You seem like the type to pace around in his living room wondering if you should call or not,” Stiles is saying now, and Derek starts wondering exactly how far his powers of sensing emotions go because he's spot fucking on, “so let me be the voice in your head – _call._ ” 

Without another word, he's vanishing back into the crowd with Allison staggering behind him. Derek can do nothing else except for hear Scott's excited chatter in his ear about how _holy shit dude you just got a spark's phone number!!!_ like a tiny little fly buzzing around, staring at Stiles' back as he makes his way towards the back door, presumably to stagger back home or hail a cab. 

Or, do whatever it is sparks do to get home when they're too drunk to drive. Again, Derek's never done research on sparks, so he wouldn't know. 

Derek doesn't think that he he knows anything for sure about sparks. Nothing specific, at least. Everything that he's sure of is really vague, general statements of fact that everyone knows. Sparks are powerful and can handle their own, and that in particular is something Derek has had drilled into his head by his mother when he was growing up. Humans need protecting, sparks can protect him – it was somewhat of a pack motto as far as sparks were concerned. 

The one thing Derek has always wondered, then, is _who protects the sparks_. From those who would want to steal the spark clean out of them, kill them that way by rendering them useless. And those things and people exist, out there, he knows he does – rare as they may be. Lurking around in the forests, waiting for a lost little spark to fall into their grasps. 

Something else he knows for sure is that sparks are nice. And what does that tell him aside from the fact that they all say please and thank you and bake really good pies for the farmer's market? 

They don't work jobs like humans or wolves do, and Derek has absolutely no fucking clue what they do for money instead honestly, aside from selling baked goods. They don't typically just walk around in public except for at places like coffee shops and grocery stores and, apparently, bars? Derek's never seen one at a bar before, but there was Stiles last night.

The point is, Derek doesn't know what the fuck sparks _do_. Where they _go_. The fact that Stiles is the first one he's had an actual conversation with his entire life really speaks to how seldom he's had opportunities to encounter them before outside of four second interactions. 

All the sparks he's ever seen on television are typically written to be either necromancers (dirt smeared all over their faces, in contact with the _spirit realm_ , wearing monkey skulls around a chain as a necklace) or as hippies that don't wear shoes and smoke a bunch of marijuana and say shit like _it's the energies, man..._

Stiles doesn't appear to be either of those things. He, frankly, appears to be unlike any spark he's ever heard of or met in his entire life. So, Derek is understandably perplexed, as he sits on the edge of his bed with the magic post-it note in his hands, scanning his eyes over the purple glitter ink that Stiles' phone number is scrawled in. There are a lot of things to be perplexed about, here. 

The first is that a spark would be interested in him in any way, shape or form. Scott's excitement last night after Stiles walked away was not unfounded; if encountering a spark in general is rare and thrilling, than actually catching one's attention and getting something as intimate as a phone number is just fucking unspeakably incredible. It's really unbelievable that his dopey next door neighbor somehow managed to catch Stiles' eye for seven entire months. Derek had always assumed that sparks only hook up with other sparks, seeing as how the only people who would ever be able to keep up with a spark is probably just another spark – either that, or a truly extraordinary human or werewolf. 

Derek is not extraordinary. He's not even an alpha. He's a boring beta with an ex-wife living in a boring neighborhood in a boring house – the most exciting thing about him is the car he owns. Even then, it was just an impulse buy that he regrets every now and again. 

The second thing perplexing him is that he doesn't even know where to begin with a spark. It's probably really not very forward thinking, probably grounded somewhere in unfair and untrue stereotypes, but he honestly cannot help thinking that sparks are a completely different species altogether. They think differently and act differently and Derek has no idea how to fucking handle it. 

All he knows beyond any shadow of a doubt is that he wants to. Handle it, that is. Who wouldn't? He would be insane to say no to a spark that wants to hook up with him. Literally nuts. He doesn't need someone to tell him that. The problem is that – well – he's never really hooked up with anyone. Stiles appears to be operating under a frequency where there's not going to be dates or dinner or romantic gestures like Derek is used to, which is...fine. Easier, right? 

And he's jumping the gun, anyway. He hasn't even called the kid and doesn't know if he's already changed his mind or if that was all just the alcohol talking. Derek starts seriously considering throwing the post-it note out before he even has the chance to program the number into his phone, until he remembers what Stiles said last night – _call_. 

Derek pinches the bridge of his nose. This is a bad idea. This is clearly a bad idea; unpredictable, completely out of left field, impulsive, possibly dangerous. 

But hasn't he been saying that he wants to get out of his routine? Hasn't he been saying that it's time he got out of his rut, that nearly eight months is long enough, now, that he should be moving on and – seeing other people? 

Stiles is so far off the beaten path, so completely out of the routine that Derek's built for himself he might as well be from another fucking planet (and he's heard of a group of people who genuinely believe sparks _are_ aliens from another planet), that he should be perfect for what he's been trying to do for himself lately. 

So, why not? 

There's a crackle on the other end of the phone, something that sounds a lot like electricity backfiring for a second, an overcharge of power or a surge, and then, “hello?” Stiles' voice sounds more tinny and scratchy that he's ever heard another person's over the phone, as if he's sort of just...not like other people and technology responds differently to him, and Derek instantly gets an ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

It's unsettling enough that he has to take a second before saying, “This is Derek.” 

Another crackle, and then Stiles is laughing. “So it is!” 

“Yeah...”

“Took you a while.”

Derek looks at the digital clock on his bedside table – it's only seven o'clock at night, the night after the bar. He thinks that's not a very long time at all, feels like arguing for some reason, but Stiles is already talking over his thoughts. 

“What are you doing right now?” Pause, not long enough for Derek to answer him. “Let me guess, actually. Are you...alone in your own house waiting to invite me over?” 

This is not the kind of person that Derek knows how to talk to, he quickly discovers. Stiles is quick-witted and clever, talks way too fast, thinks way too fast, and Derek is just sort of bumbling along behind him, struggling to catch up. Derek isn't particularly witty or even interesting, and now he's just sitting on the edge of his bed going _um..._ while Stiles laughs on the other end of the line. 

“Well, I'm not just going to show up until you say I can, Derek,” something like a sigh, coming across more like white noise or interference of a microphone, sounds from the other line. “Or did you call me just to tell me you're not interested?” 

Derek rubs a hand down his face. “No, I'm – interested.” 

“Okay.” 

“So -” he scratches the back of his neck, sighs through his nose, and tries to remember how to do this. He's long past trying to shoot for sexy or intriguing, because that ship has long since fucking sailed and he can only rely on his looks for that, so he settles for awkward and clipped. “...you want to come over?” 

“How forward of you!” Stiles mock gasps, and it sounds like he snaps his fingers on the other line. “Right now?” 

Derek glances around his room; neat, tidy, just like the rest of the house. In that regard, he has nothing to worry about. “Yeah, if you – if you want.” 

“All right.” 

And then the line goes dead. 

Derek doesn't know if he should be waiting downstairs for Stiles to show up, or if Stiles has suddenly changed his mind and has no intentions of showing up outside his house at all. The entire thing is giving him massive tension, as he paces around in his kitchen and tries to decide if making dinner should be something he does or if that would seem too date like for Stiles' tastes these days, or if he should turn on the television so that it's not just the two of them sitting around in his boring, silent house, or if maybe he should just run out of the back door before Stiles has a chance to show up. 

Then again, Derek thinks, he could probably somehow find Derek if it really came down to it. And not the way wolves do, using scent as a tracking device – it's probably nothing like that, at all. 

Half an hour after the phone call ended, there are three knocks on his front door. He can smell Stiles' caramel coffee scent seeping in from underneath the door, drifting through any weaknesses in the house's foundation and walls, so the deep steadying breath he tries to take before opening up the door doesn't really help him so much as make things much worse and harder to think. 

Regardless of the fact that he's not ready at all, he pulls the door open, and there's the spark. 

He's standing there looking bizarre – which maybe isn't a very nice thing or even a convincing thing to say about a person that Derek's basically invited over to _hook up_ with (whatever that even fucking means to kids these days) – but he...does. He's wearing dark jeans, a black hoodie with the hood pulled up so Derek can't even really see his face aside from his mouth and jawline, and he's got that metal baseball bat in his fingers again. 

He looks like he's come here to literally beat Derek to death. 

Then, he grins, lifts one shoulder up in a half shrug, and says, “I can't come in until you invite me.” 

Derek is mystified enough that all he can say is, “ _really_?” He thought that was a vampire thing. 

“Really,” Stiles says back, flipping his hood down off of his head so Derek can get a good look at Stiles' caramel eyes underneath the porch light. “It's mostly just with the homes of werewolves – magic isn't welcome here until you say it is.” 

The fact that Derek never fucking knew this, that no one's ever told him, that no television show has ever brought it up, for some reason pisses him off. Why would he not need to know this shit? That no spark can enter his home until he invites them inside? He feels like going over to his laptop and google searching sparks for hours on end, gathering as much information as he physically can. 

Instead, he clears his throat, and says, “er – come in?” 

Stiles grins again, and reaches his leg forward to pull one foot inside of Derek's house, as if testing the waters for a moment, and then pulls himself all the way inside, slamming the door behind him quickly. 

Derek jerks backwards, startled, as his entire house just sort of...quakes for a second. Windows rattling, coffee table shaking hard enough that one of the candles Laura bought for him knocks over with a smack, a couple bottles of spices in the kitchen falling out of the rack. The wolf braces himself back against the frame between the living room and the kitchen, while Stiles just stands there and looks around himself for a second – not like he's surprised by this turn of events, but like he knew it would happen and now is just waiting patiently for it to stop. 

Stop, it does, after a solid ten seconds of a mini earthquake, and then Stiles cracks his knuckles. “Sorry about that,” a sheepish smile crosses his face as he stares at Derek. “Normally it's not as intense.” 

Derek blinks at him. “That was...?” 

“Energy meeting energy pretty much,” he says this with another shrug, lifting his baseball bat up and examining it for a moment, cocking his head to the side as he sweeps his eyes up and down the length of it. “Your wolf gives off a bit of an aura – did you know that?” 

Not really, actually? 

Stiles just shrugs again. “Sort of like there's a wolf prowling around that you can't see or aren't even aware of. Ghost-wolf.” 

Derek gets an image of a translucent ghost-wolf wandering around inside of his house, following him around out in public where no one can see it, waiting in the passenger seat beside him as he drives from place to place. 

“Plus, I give off energy no matter what. I feel like you've most likely noticed that.” 

“Yeah,” Derek says honestly, still backed up against the wall, keeping a safe distance from where Stiles is standing in the living room. “I've really, really noticed that.” 

Stiles still has that fucking bat in his hand, twirls it around for a moment, before dropping the head of it down onto the ground, leaning down on top of it, fixing his eyes onto the wolf once more with a wane smile. “Generally speaking, wolves get a little antsy about magic – it's kind of like a tail-twitch for them. So, ghost-wolf met me and didn't like me, and the house went all Richter on us.” 

This explanation makes sense; maybe that explains the way that Derek still feels uncomfortable underneath Stiles' gaze, why the sight of him sends a chill up his spine, in spite of the fact that he's pretty certain Stiles is no threat to him. 

Maybe it's just the thought that he _could_ be a threat, if he wanted to be. As easily as Derek could surge forwards and claw Stiles' throat out of his pale neck, Stiles could stop him and light him on fire. If he wanted to. 

It's not really something he wants to consider for any longer than he has to, so instead he clears his throat, and says, “what's with the bat?” 

Stiles glances down at it, as if he somehow forgot that it was there in his hand at all. “Ha!” He chortles, shaking his head. “I always forget that seeing a guy just walking around with a baseball bat is sorta weird, huh?”

“Kind of,” Derek agrees, finally moving away from the wall, about two feet closer to where Stiles is standing with his bat. “Is it – magic?” He feels absolutely ludicrous saying that, like he's some huge idiot, but Stiles just smiles, a bit tersely, and nods.

“Connected to me, in a way. It's hard to explain actually.” Hie averts his eyes, like he doesn't want to say anything more on the subject, and props the bat up into the corner of Derek's living room. “Not as interesting as you'd think it would be.” 

Except that it is interesting. Derek fixes his eyes on the plain looking metal bat where it rests against the wall now, while Stiles walks away from it and sets the candle that got knocked over in the quake back up into a standing position. He doesn't get how a part of a person could be inside of something that silly, simple, inane. 

It's become increasingly apparent to Derek that he knows even less than he thought he did about sparks. Like, where before he thought he just wasn't sure of the specifics of them, now he's thinking that he literally has never had a single fucking clue about what a spark actually is. The revelation is a little uncomfortable, for him; he thought sparks just had cool tricks and a lot of power boiling underneath their skin – he had no fucking idea about, like, horcruxes or ghost-wolves or energies. 

“Can I ask you something?” Derek says to Stiles, who's just standing in the living room looking out of place and otherworldly. “It might be kind of...rude.”

Stiles smirks with a nod. “I've heard it all, so you'll have to try really hard to offend me.”

Derek can only imagine what sorts of questions Stiles has been asked by people just as ignorant as he is, if not more, so he bets that his question is all in all pretty tame compared to all of that. “What kind of stuff can you actually – er...do?” 

The spark grins broadly, lifts both of his hands in the air, palms facing himself, long fingers splayed out like spider's legs, and says, “with these?” 

Derek stares at his fingers, tries not to focus or think about how long and slender they are.

“You wanna see something?” He asks, cocking his head to the side as he starts coming closer to where Derek is standing. For a second, Derek thinks the spark is going to reach his fingers out and give Derek some kind of static shock, but instead, he barrels straight past him further into the living room, to where a big open space is sitting right in front of the hallway leading to the bathroom and Derek's bedroom. Then, he sits himself down criss-cross on the floor, and gestures widely to the space in front of him. “Come sit.” 

Derek hesitates for only a fraction of a second. Again, it's not that he thinks Stiles is going to hurt him or anything – it's just...magic, you know? It's kind of freaky. His limbs feel a little slow as he approaches the spot Stiles wants him to sit, sluggish like his body's not looking forward to this at all, while his mind is whirring a mile a minute in excitement. It's an interesting pair of dueling emotions to have at once. 

Down he sits, crossing his legs like Stiles. “I feel like a kindergartener. Do we have to sit like -”

“Yes,” Stiles cuts him off – out of nowhere, his face is very serious. “The ritual requires it.” 

“ _Ritual_?”

Stiles raises one eyebrow, and then begins to rub his palms together very deliberately. Derek watches this with rapt attention, convinced the spark is about to concoct a bomb or a fireball or something deadly – but instead...

Stiles pulls his palms apart, and a deck of huge black cards shuffles itself across the air, from palm to palm, until the entire deck is resting in one of Stiles' hands. 

“Tarot cards?” Derek says incredulously, face souring. “What are you gonna do? Read my mind?” 

The fact that Stiles doesn't even crack a smile at that has Derek worrying that he really _is_ about to read Derek's fucking mind – and, it's not like there's anything particularly incriminating inside of Derek's brain, per se, but...boundaries!? 

Before Derek can say _please don't read my fucking mind, Stiles, I mean it,_ the spark's eyes start glowing purple, and Derek knows well enough to know that there's no turning back now. The thing about the purple is that it's not solid – it's not a single, pulsing neon glow, like an alpha's red eyes or a beta's gold. 

It's like there are depths to it. Shades of purple, varying from light to dark, sparking and flickering like fireworks or a candle in the wind, alive. It's paralyzing, almost, to have those eyes stare directly into his, taking up all of his focus; for a couple seconds, he's completely unaware of what Stiles is doing, unaware of what's going on around him, while the eye contact just lasts, and lasts, and Derek gets pulled in further and further into a purple haze - 

Until Stiles flicks his fingers against the back of the deck of cards, and they one by one, like CGI in a fucking movie, flit their way to hover in the air in between Stiles and Derek's bodies. They're at eye level with both of them, just hanging there, and Derek cannot feel what his facial expression is, but he's sure it's something along the lines of unmitigated awe and terror. 

He has never in his life seen something like this. He's just...struck. Ghost-wolf must be freaking out right now. 

This time, Stiles snaps his fingers, until all except for one card fall onto the floor with a clutter, spread all around their crossed legs onto the carpeting. 

Derek stares at the one lone card left hovering, and Stiles stares at him, his lips in a grim line, eyes still blazing like neon lights. “Take it,” Stiles says, and Derek swears the lights go down for a second, a flicker or a flash. 

The wolf swallows. This is not how he thought this night was going to go; here he was thinking there was going to be making out and god knows what else, and now look at him. 

Slowly, he reaches out and takes the card out of the air. It doesn't tug back, doesn't try to stay hovering, no invisible strings holding it in place. As soon as he puts his fingers on it, it just comes along for the ride. 

It feels the same way the post-it with Stiles' phone number on it felt; like magic, in a way that can't be explained except for just that. A fruity scent, but tainted like a poisoned apple, something that's not supposed to exist but does anyway against all odds and laws of nature. 

He just stares at the back of the card for a couple of seconds, the dark black background and the gold designs throughout, physically unable to flip it over. He's seen enough tarot cards to know what they do and what their purpose is, but mostly just from phony people in exaggerated clothing and jewelry, talking about _seeing the future_.

Once again, he flicks his eyes up to Stiles, and he thinks that maybe his previous assumption that the spark is nothing like the necromancers in the movies might've been a bit of an oversight on his part. Stiles nods his head, once, and Derek looks back down at the card.

With a heavy heart, he flips the card over. 

In Stiles' messy handwriting, the same purple glitter gel pen's ink. _Coupon for 1 (one!) blowjob courtesy of Stiles Stilinski._

Derek stares at it. “You're fucking with me.” He says this very resolutely, conclusions drawn, all the data added up; Stiles has been fucking with him this entire time. The cards, the lights flickering, the purple eyes – a joke. 

Stiles starts laughing; maniacally, almost, his entire body shaking with it. He leans forward and ducks his head as he laughs even harder.

“All that for a gag,” Derek says, frowning down at the card with a roll of his eyes. 

“You should've -” Stiles sits up, wiping tears out of his eyes, “you should've seen your _face_.” 

In spite of himself, Derek's lips quirk up at the corners, because – okay, yes. It was funny. In a way. It wasn't very funny that he thought he was about to get told the exact date of his fucking death for a moment there, but it was moderately funny that Stiles actually managed to convince him that was all real for a second there. Not many people aside from his sisters have been able to pull jokes over on him like that. “So you can't tell the future?” 

“What?” Stiles asks, still laughing slightly to himself. “No, no, holy shit, I'm not a fucking psychic, Derek, oh my God. I can't do anything like that,” he snaps his fingers and the rest of the cards, the ones lying all over the floor, collect themselves into a pile and then _poof_. Vanish. “I'm a spark, Derek, not a carnival attraction.” 

Sounds like he should be offended by the accusation from the way he phrases it, but Stiles is still smiling at the wolf and looking amused like he doesn't really mind at all. “Oh,” Derek says, furrowing his brow. 

“I can do fun stuff like that,” Stiles explains, clasping his hands together in his lap. “Just stupid little tricks, mostly – or I can set your house on fire.” 

Derek startles, flicking his eyes up and away from the ludicrous card and looking into Stiles' eyes. They're back to caramel now, human and plain, but still there's something behind them that just...flickers. 

“Depends on my mood, you know?” 

Even though Derek knows he's just joking around, the fact that there's fire waiting inside of Stiles' fingertips right this very second, that he could...

It doesn't scare him. It intrigues him. 

“But I meant it about that,” he reaches across the space dividing them and points his finger at the card Derek has in his hand, raising his eyebrows. “Cash that bad boy in any time.” 

“So you were serious about that whole thing, then?” Derek asks him, hesitantly; feeling all nervous and clammy like he had when he called the spark in the first place. “About the – er...” his mind flips around for the proper, hip terminology, what all the kids are saying. “...friends with benefits?” 

Stiles smiles at him, leans forwards a little, scraping his jeans along the carpeting until his knees are almost touching Derek's. “Do you like me?” He asks, cocking his head to the side. 

“Yes,” Derek decides without thinking about it; mostly because he's pretty positive that, all things aside, he does like Stiles. Or at least is interested. 

“Enough to, like, kiss me and all?” 

“Yes.” 

The spark pauses for a second, searching Derek's eyes. “But – you think it's too soon for a relationship after Kate, right?” It's so bizarre hearing his possible new conquest just say Kate's name like that; so easily, without any hesitation. 

Derek swallows. “I – yeah. Too soon.” 

Stiles nods his head with another smile, like he thought so, and says, “so, then, let's just kiss and all.” 

In the back of his mind, there's a warning signal going off. Some teeny tiny little voice telling him that it's not going to work. That someone's going to get too involved, that someone isn't going to be able to handle it, that really all they're doing is playing with fire with a can of gasoline at their feet, hoping and praying that neither of them drops the match on accident. 

But he thinks about going back to how it was before. He thinks about breakfast, work, drive home, dinner, dishes, Netflix, bed, and he thinks about how horrible and terrible and lonely and sad the last almost eight months of his life have been, how he's been so unhappy and hardly going out, hardly seeing his friends or his pack or his family. How he sometimes still thinks about calling.

And he decides that he doesn't want to think about calling anymore. He decides he wants to focus his attentions on something else. A distraction, that's all Stiles is really offering. A chance to play new romantic and not do things the conventional or typical way; fuck around for a while, until they get sick of each other. 

He could do that, he thinks. Of course he doesn't factor in the fact that Stiles isn't the type of person you could get _sick_ of, not the type of person who ever gets boring or uninteresting. 

Stiles holds his hands out towards Derek, and says, “take my hands, first. It just takes a while to get used to.” 

Derek drops the blowjob tarot card down on the ground next to himself, and blinks down at Stiles' hands. He thinks about last night, when Stiles shook Scott's hand and his friend looked so fucking flabbergasted and despondent for a couple of seconds, like something amazing and indescribable just happened to him. “What exactly is _it_?” 

Stiles swishes his head back and forth, like he can't quite think how to explain it. “Energies, Derek! Take my word for it – it's just a little startling, at first, but you get used to it.” He curls his fingers a few times, like _come here_ , and Derek huffs. 

He really has no fucking idea what he's getting himself into, with all this. All the same, he reaches his own hands forward, and lets Stiles intertwine their fingers. 

Suddenly Scott's facial expression makes a lot of fucking sense. It's not exactly the orgasmic surprise he had expected, and it's not like the touch goes straight down to his crotch or anything like that – but it does decidedly feel good. Sort of like how it feels to have someone scrape long nails gently down your bare back. Just nice and chill inducing, but not necessarily sexual in nature or like he's getting a raging hard-on just from holding Stiles' hands.

But he definitely understands now what Stiles meant about getting used to it. It's sort of hard to concentrate on anything else except for this feeling, energies colliding or whatever it really, truly is. 

“Is it like this for humans, too?” Derek asks after a minute or so, when the feeling is dulling into more of a tickle than anything else. 

“Nah,” Stiles says back, “humans have nothing going on in terms of energies. They're, like, zombies to me.” 

“So you were dating a zombie.” 

“In more ways than one,” he mutters under his breath, like Derek isn't supposed to hear it – so Derek studiously doesn't respond to it. “How's it going now?” 

“It's okay,” Derek says with a shrug. “Fading.” 

“All right. Wanna make out?” 

Derek can feel himself blushing – which, as a twenty-six year old man, sitting here blushing at the prospect of making out with another person is just way too high school for him. He feels like he needs to explain something really quickly to Stiles, to just get it out of the way so the embarrassment can be over with and he can get to the good parts of all this. “Look – just so we're all clear about this...” Stiles waits expectantly, blinking. “...I haven't – I've only ever kissed one person before.” 

This time, Stiles' reaction is exactly what he expected. He looks surprised, eyebrows raising up into his hairline. “Kate Argent is the only person-”

“We got together when we were sixteen.” 

“You've never kissed a guy?” A pause. “You've never _been with_ -”

“One person, Stiles.” 

The spark furrows his eyebrows together and gives Derek what could be quantified as a concerned motherly glare. “Are you sure you want to -”

“Yes.”

“Okay, but I'm just saying it's your _first_ guy, so -”

“I think I can decide for myself what's a big deal to me and what isn't,” he insists, gripping onto Stiles' hands just slightly harder, as if he's afraid the spark will change his mind, pull away. “It doesn't bother me.” 

Now, apparently, the prospect of making out has been put on the back burner, and Stiles wants to _discuss_. Maybe Derek should've left this entire conversation for at least after he got to put his tongue in Stiles' mouth, for god's sake. “Is this some weird experiment thing for you? Because if that's the case, then I -”

“I've known that I'm bisexual for a very long time. Way before Kate and I were even together.” 

“Oh.” Stiles' eyebrows lift up in surprise again, possibly pleasant surprise, and he nods his head. “Well – if you're sure this isn't a big deal...” 

“It's really, really not.” 

Stiles observes him for another couple of seconds, lips puckered in thought, before his face collapses in acceptance, and he leans forward. 

When you've only kissed two people, it's sort of hard to not compare notes. He feels like trash doing it, and he really hopes that that's not one of those things that Stiles can just sense, but he really can't help himself. It just happens, intrusively, without anyway of stopping it. 

One thing is absolutely and glaringly evident – either Stiles is the single best kisser the world has ever seen, or Kate was just really, really awful. Like, heinously terrible. Because in comparison...well, there really is no comparison. Like, no competition. Which is almost funny to think about, considering how many months he spent thinking he'd never find anyone better than Kate Argent, what a loss he'd suffered. 

Hilarious. Really. 

Kate always sort of kissed like it was a chore she had to get through, even when they were crazy hormonal teenagers. She just never seemed particularly into it. As a result, their makeout sessions were short lived and boring, slobbery mostly, filled with Kate pushing Derek's hands away from her neck or hips with sighs through her nose almost as if the entire ordeal was just a thing she was forced to endure and suffer. Kind of like she was taking one for the team. 

Stiles kisses like they do in the movies. In that desperate, this-is-the-last-time, you're about to catch your flight to Europe and I'll wait for you, _please don't leave me_ type of way that Derek honestly thought was only played up for the cameras, that nobody _really_ kissed that way because kissing wasn't that fucking great. Stiles puts his hand on the side of Derek's face, and kisses like he means it, hot and thick but somehow still precise, measured, calculated like he's practiced before, like every other person he's ever kissed has just been practice for this moment, right now. 

The thought (the fact) that he's lived twenty-six years of his life either thinking that kissing was gross or just not that great because he only ever kissed one person...he suddenly wonders how people who wait until marriage to even kiss are doing – horrible, probably. But ignorance is bliss. 

At one point, Stiles apparently can't stand the distance between their chests that exists because of both of them sitting criss-cross, so he rectifies it by suddenly climbing on top of Derek, one knee on either side of his hips. Derek has to tilt his neck upward to reach Stiles' mouth again, while Stiles drapes his arms over Derek's shoulders, and it's altogether way too close. 

Derek hasn't been this close to another person since Kate. And, for the record, they hadn't been having sex for about three months towards the end there – so it's really been about a year since he's had physical contact of this magnitude. 

He had kind of expected it to feel weird, or wrong. Like anyone else aside from Kate being in his arms was just off and foreign, leave a nasty taste behind in his mouth. 

This is nothing like that. 

His skin is still tingling from the energy Stiles gives off from his spark, all over his body, every last nerve ending lighting up like fireworks, and Stiles smells so fucking good, and his body up tight against Derek's feels even better, and every thing is – better than he ever thought it would be. 

By the time Stiles is pulling back, Derek feels breathless and taken apart. For a few seconds, Stiles stays straddled on top of Derek, and Derek keeps his hands on Stiles' hips like he needs that to ground himself, bring himself down from the high, and neither of them say anything. Derek, because his mind is a complete and utter fucking blank except for that caramel and coffee combination Stiles is always giving off. 

Finally, Stiles pulls off. He lands with a thump on his backside on the carpet, snickers to himself, and then looks up and meets Derek's eyes. This time, Derek doesn't feel even half as uncomfortable as he used to under the spark's gaze. “Not bad for a first kiss,” he says. 

_You don't even know the half of it_ , Derek thinks to himself, scrutinizing the freckles speckled across the side of Stiles' face with interest. 

“Do you feel weird about this?” Stiles asks, after a couple moments of silence. When Derek looks away from the freckles to meet his eyes, he sees a bit of a bashful, nervous facial expression; something that he hasn't really seen on Stiles' face yet. 

“I don't feel weird. Do you?” 

“Nope. I feel like -” he bites his lip, looks away. “...we should continue.” 

“Me, as well.”

\----

Lydia has a tendency to look unimpressed with every single thing that crosses in front of her face. With her permanent pout, bored body language complete with crossed arms and a tilt of her hips, and icy cold stare, it's sometimes hard to tell exactly what it is that Lydia really thinks about a certain situation or person, even with the werewolf senses.

Today, though – the mask she normally wears crumbles right in front of Derek's face, and she leans forward in her chair and practically screams at him, loud enough that a flock of birds flees from the tree they had all been perched in above their heads. “What?” 

Derek looks up, watching the birds fly away from his seat on the deck across from Lydia on her back patio. “I said -”

“No, I heard you,” she rips her sunglasses off her face so that Derek gets a good long look at her sea foam eyes. “I heard you loud and clear, I'm just – did you mean to say...” she trails off, shakes her head, tries to think of a word that rhymes with _spark_ that Derek could've possibly confused. Apparently giving up on that venture, she leans back into her seat hard enough that the bit of her back exposed from her halter dress makes a smack noise against the the back of the chair and just gapes at her beta. 

Derek scratches the back of his head, squints up into the sunlight through his sunglasses. 

“Are you fucking with me,” she says, no inflection. 

“No,” he shrugs. “I thought you'd want to know.” 

“I _do_ want to know, holy _shit_. A spark?” She begins to shake her head side to side again, like the thought is so fucking shocking, or so ludicrous, or so incredible, that words honestly escape her. Which for Lydia and her massive vocabulary and tendency to thumb through thesauruses and lists of out of practice words whenever she's bored is really saying something. “Which one?” 

_Which one_ is a pretty legitimate question to ask, actually – considering sparks are so few and far between, the ones that people see out and about pretty often have instant face and name recognition. “Stiles?” 

She furrows her eyebrows together, purses her lips. She's never heard of him either, then. Derek's never even seen Stiles at the farmer's market with the rest of the sparks, selling pies or homemade enchanted jewelry, and he'd also never even laid eye on the kid before looking out his window and seeing him taking a baseball bat to the hood of his next door neighbor's car. 

“Are you making him up.” She crosses her arms across her chest and fixes him with a mom glare, lips turning down into a frown. “Is this your way of getting me and the rest of the pack off your back?” 

Derek gives her a look; this is sort of what he expected. Running into a spark is one thing (cool and fun and a neat story to tell at a party), talking to a spark is one thing (incredible and worthy of a tweet, facebook status, instagram caption), but _making out_ with one? Getting their _phone number_?

Inviting them inside your _house_? Unheard of. Derek feels like if he manages to prove he's hooked up with a spark, they'll erect a statue of him in the town square. He's pretty positive that there's already a statue of the dopey next door neighbor ex-boyfriend Chris somewhere 

Rather than try and convince Lydia that he's telling the truth with just his heartbeat and words, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet. He fishes around for the post-it note with Stiles' phone number on it, and when he pulls it out into the open air and holds it across the table for Lydia to take, she stares at it like it's a ticking bomb that's about to go off in five...four...three...two...

She takes a great big inhale of the air, and she must be able to pick up on Stiles' magic scent; her nostrils flare and she tentatively reaches forward to hold the post-it note in her own hand. Her fingers twitch and curl around the paper while her eyes scan across the messy numbers written there again and again, a frown on her lips. “Oh, my God.” 

“I told you,” Derek says easily with a shrug. “I'm kind of offended that you think I would fabricate some story about a fake spark just so -”

“You hardly ever leave your house,” Lydia cuts him off primly, sliding her sunglasses back over her eyes, dropping the post-it note back onto the table before attempting to subtly drag her fingers up to her nose to sniff at them. “But the one time you do, you manage to run into and charm a spark. _You_.” 

Derek glowers. “As if I'm so unlikeable?” 

“You're not charming, Derek, and you know it. You're an asshole.” 

He thinks about arguing, contesting that statement with everything he's got – but the reality is, he truly isn't charming. And he really is an asshole. It's kind of why he and Kate ever wound up together in the first place. She's not charming and is a bit of a bitch, so they kind of started to cancel each other out after a while. 

In that vein, Lydia sort of has a point. Sparks are notoriously friendly and amiable (until you ruffle their feathers, at least) – for fuck's sake, they bake and sell _pies_. They're all essentially sixty year old grandparents trapped inside the young and lithe bodies of the supernatural with more magic than any of them know what to do with. And Stiles is pretty nice, and plenty friendly, if a little bit on the nuttier side of the spectrum. 

So maybe it is a little surprising that Stiles has any interest in him whatsoever. But it's not like he's getting married to the kid? “We're just friends.” 

Lydia takes her sunglasses off again. “You just told me you and him kissed.” 

He shifts nervously in his seat, wishes there was another flock of birds fleeing from a tree for him to focus his attention on. He thought if there would be one person, one person in the entire pack who would have absolutely zero judgment about the whole just friends thing, it would be his alpha. “Well – we did kiss.” He pauses, chooses his next words. “Made out, actually.” 

She eyes him steadily, lips pursed. “You're being stupid.”

“I am _not_ being -”

“You are being so _clueless_ ,” she rolls her eyes heavenward, and shakes her head at the sunny sky as if this entire conversation has been a huge tax on her life. “You cannot do casual, Derek.” 

“How would you know?” He challenges, and doesn't back down when Lydia locks eyes with him again at the dissent. “I've only ever been with one person before, Lydia, so how would you know that I _can't_ do casual?” 

“Because you've only ever been with one person before, Derek,” she parrots back in a no shit tone of voice. 

“So?” 

“So! You're making a _mistake_ ,” the word draws out slowly, like she's trying to explain the concept to a fourth grader, and Derek grits his teeth. “I know you a lot better than you seem to be able to remember right now.” 

That's true – Derek knows it is. Lydia probably knows him better than anyone else, including Scott, including his own family and original pack. She was the one who tried to tell him not to marry Kate, she was the one who convinced him to join her pack and get out of his parents' house after high school, she was the one who let him stay at her house for three weeks after Kate told him she wanted a divorce because he didn't have anywhere else to go. 

“...and I know you can't do casual, Derek.” 

Stubborn as always, Derek persists. “I've never tried before,” he shrugs his shoulders. “For all we know, I'm exceptionally good at being detached.” 

Lydia gives him another long, long look. It doesn't exactly speak to any amount of confidence that she might have in Derek's abilities to shake people off, to not care as much. After another couple of seconds, she slides her sunglasses back on her face for the second time and looks away, towards the inside of her mansion where a fluffy white cat is preening in the light spilling in through the glass doors. “You can make your own mistakes,” she says in a cold voice, rolling her shoulders one or twice. “But you better remember not to _fuck_ with a spark.”

\----

The next time he sees Stiles, it's not because he called the spark, or that the spark called him. It's actually been a full four days since the two have come into contact with one another; Derek hasn't called because he thinks calling is the opposite of being casual, and he wouldn't know where to begin with texting – in spite of the fact that he's opened up a message to Stiles about six times only to close it within seconds.

So, he just runs into the kid. 

Derek is out later than he usually is, later than he's been since Kate. Even then, she was mostly an _in bed by ten_ person like Derek, as well. The point is – he's out late, close to midnight, because he out of nowhere had a craving for McDonald's french fries and actually got out of his bed and drove to the fast food restaurant in his sweat pants and undershirt just for french fries.

Apparently the routine he's groomed and maintained so intensely these past eight months is long gone, flying out the window along with every single handle he thought he had on his life. 

He's walking back out to the car with his McDonald's bag, jingling along with his keys, thinking about how sad and pathetic it is to be one of these people parked alone in their cars eating fast food while listening to top 40. He clicks the unlock button, pauses at his door to pull it open, and gets a creeping feeling up his spine. 

It's been long enough since he's seen Stiles that he can't place it at first. He knows he's being watched, tilts his head to the side. Hones his senses – sniffs, listens intently, half expecting a member from the pack that Lydia managed to piss off a few weeks ago to leap out from one of the flower bushes and attack Derek. 

Instead, he turns around to find Stiles standing, at most, a foot away from him, his hood pulled up, baseball bat dangling from his fingers. Derek actually leaps backwards against his car. It's one of those moments in the movies where a string section on the soundtrack would make the !!! sound, when the killer appears and death is imminent. 

But, again. Instead of getting killed, Derek gets laughed at. 

“I love doing that to werewolves,” he says easily, whipping his hood down from his face and leaning back against his baseball bat where he has it wedged into the tarmac. “Gets 'em every time.” 

All Derek can do for the moment is gape, still backed up against his car, clutching onto his McDonald's bag for dear life like he was about to use it as a weapon. 

In reality, if Stiles ever decided that he wanted to hurt Derek, if it ever came down to a fight...oh, Derek knows there'd be no fucking competition. None whatsoever. Stiles could dead Derek faster than the wolf could even blink, faster than he could get his claws out. 

But only if he felt like it. 

“Do – what exactly?” He asks, pushing away from the car but keeping a wary eye on the spark. Tonight, he's in all black again, almost invisible in the dim lights of the parking lot. 

“The silent creep mode. Sneak up on you in the dead of night, confuse your senses, and then _pounce_.” He accentuates the final word with a lurch forwards, before stepping back with a snicker. “That sort of thing.” 

Derek thinks for a moment as he analyzes the person in front of him. He takes in the usual assets – the wide eyes, ever-present smirk, freckles, baseball bat, all coupled with a scent so strong Derek can't believe the spark can manage to cover it up even for a second. Then he glances at the fries down in his hand, and then up around the gas station parking lot they're in, and frowns. “How'd you even know I was here?” 

Smirk. “Obviously because I... _traced your aura._ ” He wiggles his fingers in Derek's face, hums The Twilight Zone theme song, while Derek just frowns even more deeply, going cross eyed looking at the fingers in front of his face. 

“Did you really.” Derek doesn't doubt for even a half a second that Stiles could trace the ghost-wolf aura if he felt so inclined – but maybe he's still a little bitter and skeptical after the last time he unwittingly believed Stiles' antics and only got a coupon for a blowjob out of it. 

“No, for fuck's sake,” he retracts his fingers and scoffs before jutting his bat in the direction of the gas station across from the McDonald's. “I come here for the slushies sometimes – fifty percent off if you come in after midnight! And you came here for some french fries.” 

Derek glances at the fries in his hand. For some reason he's embarrassed by them now. And, now that he's thinking about embarrassment, he remembers that he's in his pajamas, with bed head, standing outside of a McDonald's past midnight. 

Lydia was absolutely and positively right. It makes absolutely no sense why a spark would be interested in him. 

Yet, Stiles just leans forward, smiles at Derek genuinely, and says, “wanna come in and help me pick out a flavor?” Like Derek isn't the least enticing person to ever exist at the moment. 

Inside the gas station, Derek munches on his french fries and watches as Stiles fishes out the largest slushie cup available, while the girl working behind the register follows Stiles' every single move with her eyes, snaps a picture of him on her phone when he's not looking. 

He taps the cup with his finger, scanning his eyes down the line of machines whirring, a dozen different colors of syrup and ice swirling around, and hmmm's. “Usually I'm a pina coloda, coca cola, Mountain Dew blend kind of guy,” Derek thinks that sounds absolutely fucking disgusting but doesn't comment, “...but tonight I'm feeling more – cotton candy, blue raspberry, orange Fanta combo.” He turns and raises his eyebrows at Derek. “What do you think?” 

Derek swallows his fries. “I think it's a miracle you haven't rotted your teeth out of your head yet.” 

“I think you're right,” Stiles nods his head, very seriously. “Cherry blast and mountain dew – that's the way to go. Sidebar, are you going to invite me to your house tonight?” 

Derek freezes mid-chew. Swallows heavily. Stiles just leans forward and yanks down on the lever to spill cherry ooze out into his cup, wedging his bat in-between his thighs (like he's too nervous to put it down just anywhere, out here in public – Derek makes a mental note to ask him about that later), doesn't even look to see what Derek's reaction to all this is. 

If he had been looking, he'd have seen Derek's eyes bulge out his head, seen the way he nearly choked on his food, looking like the world's single hugest spazz while Stiles just stands there looking cool calm and composed, making his ridiculous slushie. 

Of all the ways he thought his night was going to end when he climbed out of bed for a late night snack on a Friday night...this was definitely not it. Not at all. 

“Er – you wanna come over?”

“I'd like to, yeah,” the spark sidles down the line of machines to the one churning green slush, pulls down the lever, “if you want me to, as well, that is.” 

Derek shoves a handful of fries in his mouth. Glances back at the girl working the register, to find her standing there listening to this entire interaction with an amused smirk on her face. Even this random fucking stranger knows that this is weird – a spark being interested in Derek is fucking _weird_. Stiles wasn't just being a little shit earlier when he hummed The Twilight Zone theme song – this really is the fucking Twilight Zone. It must be. 

“I'd like you to, yes,” Derek decides, as if there were any other options to begin with. “Yes, sure. You can come over.” 

Outside in the parking lot, while Stiles slurps away on his drink and Derek wipes salt and grease off his fingertips and onto his sweatpants, he asks, “so should I just meet you there?” 

“I thought I could ride with you,” Stiles says back around the bright red straw. 

Derek blinks at him quizzically as they walk closer to Derek's Camaro. “Won't you just have to come back and pick up your car afterwards?” 

Stiles shrugs. “I don't drive.” 

That gives Derek a bit of pause – almost enough to skid to a stop right then and there, because what the Hell kind of twenty-one year old doesn't _drive_ , but he manages to keep walking because Stiles doesn't slow down. “You don't...? Or you can't?” 

“Both.” 

“How did you get here tonight?” The gas station is a good ways out of town – like, miles. Far enough that there's no way that Stiles walked, no fucking way in Hell. It would've been too dangerous for him to just wander around the side of the road in the dead of night; like Derek has said before, there are things and people out there who can overpower a spark if they know what they're doing. 

The spark smirks at him as he rounds to the passenger side of Derek's car, mouth already turning red from the cherry blast inside his cup. “I have my ways.” 

There's a beat. A wolf and a spark staring at each other over the hood of a Camaro. “You can _teleport_?” 

Stiles hums The Twilight Zone theme song again. Climbs inside the car without another word. 

The house quakes the same way it did the first time Stiles came inside, if maybe only a little less intense. This time, all the candles remain upright, so Derek sees it as a bit of a win. Stiles sucks on his bright red straw, deposits his baseball bat into the same corner of the room as last time, and then looks around himself like it's the first time he's ever been here before. 

Derek nervously swipes his palms on his sweatpants, scratches at the back of his head. He doesn't have any false notions of why Stiles would want to come over tonight, why Derek agreed to having him over tonight – it's nearly one o'clock in the morning, for fuck's sake. There's only one reason to invite over the guy who gave him a blowjob coupon at this time of night, and they both know it. 

Stiles apparently isn't perturbed by this at all, as he eyeballs the family picture Derek has displayed on the mantle with interest, and then moves over to the pack photo and gives it the same level of scrutiny. Like this is no big deal to him at all. Ah, just another hook up! Derek feels out of place in his own house, unsure what to do, where to go – so he just blurts out the very first thing that comes to mind. 

“Bedroom?” He thinks about punching himself directly in the tooth after he says it. 

The spark turns around mid-sip, blinking huge bambi eyes at him. “Duh,” he says. Which is a relief. Much better than _ew, what the fuck, you creep?_ Much, much better. 

Derek motions to the hallway before taking a few steps in that direction, peering over his shoulder to make sure the spark is following him, and then looks dead ahead as soon as they make eye contact. It's not as spooky as it was the first time they met, or even the second time; but still. Something about those eyes, the way they stare – it's not human. And it's not werewolf either. It's something distinctly _other_ , and Derek starts wondering if he'll ever truly be able to get used to it. 

Down the hallway and into Derek's bedroom they go, and the second Stiles steps inside of it, he makes a noise of appreciation. “That looks like a soft bed!” 

Without warning, the spark leaps forward, nearly pushing Derek out of the way, and sprawls himself on top of it. Derek watches in horror as the slushie cup almost tips over, almost spills cherry Mountain Dew guts all over the duvet. But, like magic – _"like"_ magic, more like just plain old straight up _magic_ – it rights itself in mid air at the last second, levitating quickly to the bedside table and landing with a _clap_. 

Derek gets another one of those chills up his spine as the scent of magic permeates the air for a few seconds, and then shakes it off. The sight of Stiles rubbing his face into one of Derek's pillows like a cat is enough to sober anyone up, he thinks. 

“My bed at home is so much shittier than this,” he says, voice muffled by a pillow. “I'm going to steal this bed.” 

“Could you do that?” Derek asks half seriously, sitting down on the edge to pull his shoes off one by one and stack them neatly in the same spot they always go. “Levitate an entire bed and just take it with you?” 

Stiles sits up quickly, scoots on his backside to the edge right beside Derek, and starts untying his own beat up shoes with a sheepish smile in Derek's direction, like he's embarrassed that he insulted Derek by getting on the bed with his shoes on, or something. As if Derek would really mind all that much. “Can't float anything this big,” Stiles says back amiably, dropping his shoes on a pile on the floor. “I did a dog, once, a couple of people. But I almost got expelled for those.” 

Right. That weirdo spark school in the woods of Washington. Derek has always sort of imagined Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but something tells him that if he presented this idea to Stiles, he'd laugh his head off and call Derek a _nerd_. So he keeps his mouth shut, and lets the subject drop. Leaves it for another time. 

Once their shoes are off, Stiles runs his fingers through his hair, and angles his body towards Derek's. “So,” he says. There's a twinkle in his eye as he smirks, tilting his head to the side. 

“So,” Derek says back after clearing his throat. 

Stiles snaps, drops his wrist out of Derek's line of sight – when his hand comes back into view, a very familiar looking gold and black card is resting in between his index and middle fingers. He holds it up so Derek can read the all too familiar writing, and raises his eyebrows. “Wanna cash it in?” 

This is the most forward anyone's ever been with him. There have been a few instances at bars and the like where people have come up to him, drunkenly, telling him that he's good looking and they want to have sex or do whatever – but does it really count if they can barely stand up? Derek thinks not. Plus, Kate was never a big sex-talker. They always just wound up having sex. There was no dirty talk lead up, no raised eyebrows or suggestive double entendres – it was pretty awkward, sometimes, actually. 

But there's nothing awkward about how Stiles leans in closer, presses his lips to Derek's mouth gently, before pulling back just enough that his eyelashes sweep across Derek's cheeks. “Or you could save it. If you want.” 

His breath smells like sugar and magic, and the scent of him altogether is already making him uncomfortable inside his boxers, already making him clear his throat and try to get a grip over his own lascivious thoughts. “No, I – now is – great. Good.” 

Stiles smiles. With their faces so close together, like this, Derek gets to see each individual crinkle around Stiles' eyes as his smile widens, traces them with his eyes like he's amazed by the way his skin moves. “Good.” 

He stands up from the bed, shucks his black hoodie off to reveal a dark black shirt underneath it (Derek starts wondering if he likes to cater to the idea that he's a witch by stalking around in the night wearing nothing but black – it seems like a Stiles thing to do), and points to Derek's crotch. Derek can't help it – he glances down as if he expects to see something other than his pants and possibly a semi starting to outline itself through the fabric. “You're still wearing pants.” 

“Yeah,” Derek says slowly back. 

“Do you want me to lick you through the pants, or what?” 

Derek narrows his eyes, leaning back so he can more easily shove the pants off his hips and down his thighs. “You could've just said _take your pants off, please, Derek_.” 

“ _Oh, please, Derek,_ ” Stiles puts on a girly voice, wrings his hands together like a blushing virgin from a movie set in the 1860's, “ _how ever am I supposed to get at your great big wolf dick if -_ ”

“Is everything an opportunity for a one-liner or a gag for you?” It's best to cut Stiles off before he gets traction, Derek has learned – he shucks his pants and boxers off like he's angry at them, tossing them aside and fixing Stiles with a steely glare. Which is funny, considering he's only getting harder as the seconds tick by. 

“You set me up for the punchline every god damn time,” he steps forwards and drops to his knees in-between Derek's legs, as if it's not a big deal whatsoever. “And you know it.” 

Just like that – the teasing and jokes are over, and Stiles is surging upwards from the ground, tugging on Derek's chin with his fingers to pull his neck downwards for a sloppy open-mouthed kiss. Just like last time, that spine-tingling, nice feeling that comes from a spark's energy pools up in the pit of his stomach, and Stiles doesn't seem too bothered about easing Derek into it, this time. He just curls his fingers around the wolf's neck, pulls him down further to kiss harder, deeper – while all Derek can really do is quiver.

Fingers shaking where they curl into Stiles' v-neck, eyelashes fluttering, hips spasming forwards. _That_ kind of quivering; like he's the virginal girl from the 1860's, now. It just feels so fucking good, and Stiles is so _fucking_ good at this, it really takes every last ounce of will power Derek has left to not pull him up from the ground, throw him across the bed, and climb on top of him to shove himself in-between the spark's thighs and get off that way, on his soft skin and scent. 

Stiles must be able to know this, intuitively somehow, like he knows _everything_ , because he pulls off of Derek's mouth with a pop, a line of spit trailing after him as he drops back down onto the ground fully and away from Derek's face – he doesn't bother wiping it away when it lies flat on his chin. He just smirks up at the wolf with a lifted chin, raising a single brow. 

And, just like last time; Derek feels the need to say something before they get started. 

“Look – I should probably say -” Stiles blinks up at him expectantly, waiting. “...I might, er – go too soon.” 

The spark raises both eyebrows, now, shakes his head. “It's nothing to be embarrassed about.”

In spite of his words, Derek blushes and looks away, slightly ashamed with the spark's eyes on him like that. “I haven't been with someone in a while...”

“That's okay.”

“...and I mean, I've gotten -” he swallows, shakes his head – he never should've started talking in the first place, because now it's like he just can't shut the fuck up. “...I've done this before, but not many times and – well – I'm not positive but I think maybe...” 

Stiles is staring up at him with rapt attention, a smile starting to curl around the edges of his mouth – he flicks his eyes once to Derek's dick, stares at it for a couple of seconds in the silence, and then slowly drags his eyes back up to Derek's face, his smile in full swing, now. 

“...I don't think she was that good at giving blowjobs?” 

For a couple seconds there's nothing but Stiles' smiler growing wider, and wider, until it's a grin. Then Stiles is turning his head slowly to the left, grin dropping open to let loose a drawn out _wwwooowwwww_ , before he holds both his palms up in the air. “Hold on – hold the phone.”

“I was just saying -”

“You're _saying_ that Kate Argent is _bad at sex_!” Stiles throws his head back in mirth, screaming out a laugh, like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard in his fucking life. “Oh man – that is a gem. I'm going to keep that for my bad days.” With no prep, no warning whatsoever, out of the fucking blue, Stiles leans forward and wraps his fingers around Derek's dick. Just like that.

Derek jerks, still not used to the spark's touch, and especially not used to that kind of touch from another person on his dick, and for some reason this makes Derek want to – babble. 

“I didn't say –“ Stiles drags his hand up and down, slowly, teasingly, and Derek's breath catches in his throat. “...she was _bad_. I just said – fuck. Not great. I mean – I mean -” he tilts his head backwards, closes his eyes when Stiles flicks his tongue across the tip. “...a mouth is a mouth and a dick's a dick, right? It's hard to go _bad_...”

When he opens his eyes again to look at Stiles, he's got a very different look on his face than before. Where before he was having fun at the expense of Derek's ex-wife - now he looks...determined. 

Like Derek has somehow challenged him. Lydia's words from the other day spark up in his mind – _remember not to fuck with a spark_ – and he's thinking now that he didn't really take that as seriously as he possibly should have. 

One second Derek and Stiles are in a staring contest, and the next, Stiles is shoving as much of Derek's dick as he can take at once into his mouth, handling the rest with his hand easily and quickly. From that moment forward, it's like some kind of gauntlet has been thrown inside of Stiles' mind; some kind of race to the finish line where he has to suck as _hard_ as physically possible, swirl his tongue around the underside with _conviction_ , jerk his fingers at the same pace he's bobbing his head up and down. 

Meanwhile, all Derek can do is fist his hand into Stiles' hair and spew out a string of unintelligible mish-mosh about _fuck_ and _god fucking dammit_ and _I'm going to_ \- 

The entire ordeal must take a minute. Sixty entire seconds of the most incredible feeling he's ever had in his life, of spark scent and spark energy and Stiles' tongue and mouth, Stiles making needy little noises in the back of his throat like he's absolutely loving every second of this. 

Sixty seconds, before Derek is coming so hard he sees white around the edges of his vision, making some strangled noise that he tries to muffle with his fist. That's it. Maybe he could say it was all because he hasn't had it in so long, or that he's been pretty sexually repressed lately, or he's never been with a guy before, but...

Stiles pulls off of Derek's dick, makes eye contact as a thin string of white spreads from Derek to Stiles' lips, and Derek's mind just goes... _poof._ There's no rationalizing this. Not with Stiles looking so unabashedly sex hungry and _filthy_ , licking his lips slowly and carefully like he's trying to get every last taste of Derek inside of his mouth. 

Derek's never seen anything like this outside of porn. So he's a little starstruck. It's all he can do to slap his palm across his forehead and flop backwards onto the bed with a muttering of _fuck_ from the back of his throat, shaking his head from side to side in the duvet in disbelief, trying to catch a god damn breath. 

Having none of that, Stiles climbs on top of the wolf, hands on either side of his head, knees on either side of his thighs, and stares directly into his eyes. They're not purple, not at all, but they might as well be for how much intensity is behind them, how much sexually charged energy, like he's just _become_ sex incarnate – Derek thinks he needs to calm the hell down, waxing poetic about Stiles like this but he just...can't. 

Stiles pecks him on the lips, light as a butterfly, and says, “a mouth is a mouth, huh?” 

Mindlessly, Derek runs his hand down Stiles' front, stares directly back into his eyes. “Yeah. She was bad at blowjobs.”

\----

Derek's gone to the farmer's market every single Spring and Summer week of his life for as long as he can remember – everybody goes to that thing. It's not normally the kind of place he would even entertain the thought of going to, in all honesty. But he grew up with the caramel apples and homemade jewelry and the sparks, so even when he was old enough to tell his mother that he didn't want to go anymore, and even when he was out of the house in his own pack with a wife...he still went with his family to the farmer's market.

He still goes, as a matter of fact. Even after the divorce, he was the farmer's market the following week, shoveling fried dough into his mouth and listening to his sister's tirades about what they'd do to Kate Argent if they happened to run into her. That, luckily, has never come to pass – because of Derek's stringent routine after the divorce, because of his outright refusal to go to any of her old haunts (the gun range, her favorite restaurant, that shitty fucking clothing store with the hideous bedazzled jeans), he hasn't just outright run into his ex-wife in the eight months since they've been apart. 

Plus, she's one of the only people Derek knows of that actually despises the farmer's market – also one of the very few people on planet earth who isn't that impressed by the sight of a spark. Go figure. 

The Hale family, on the other hand. 

Derek shows up at his childhood house on Wednesday after work to find Cora painting Laura's face on the front porch, something that from a distance looks like a gigantic butterfly or dragonfly, all pastel pinks and purples and greens. The market tends to be pretty cheesy, like that, and his sisters especially have always loved to play up that cheese factor – like it's a renaissance fair they're going to and not just a bunch of do-it-yourselfers and sparks gathering to peddle their (sometimes shitty) goods and services. He slams the door to his car and walks up the porch steps, hands in his pockets, and his sisters shoot each other a look as he gets closer. 

He knows and recognizes that look instantaneously for what it is. It's the look of _should we say anything should we bring it up should we mention it_ , and what a waste of time, what a waste of shared facial expressions, because, no matter what, they always wind up -

“Soooo,” Cora starts, casually dipping her brush into pink paint and narrowing her eyes, like she's super focused on the work in front of her, while Laura stares dead ahead, smashing her lips together like she's desperately trying not to laugh. “...any news, Derek?” 

Derek sighs through his nose, squints inside through the open front door to see his mother trying to gather the younger kids into submission to get them piled into cars to get going. 

“We've heard that there've been some – recent developments.” 

“Recent developments.” Derek repeats the phrase with no inflection. 

“Yeah – that certain things have been...” Laura's lips twitch as Cora talks and dots a pink design across her cheek, “... _sparking_ up.” 

Laura makes a tiny squeak from the back of her throat – the start of a laugh that she's suffocating with her lips. 

He pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger, thinks about just turning around and leaving, letting them walk to the farmer's market instead of driving them himself like he always does. “Who told you,” he demands, shaking his head. “Was it Scott?” 

“Can't reveal our sources,” Laura says with a shrug, smile widening. “But, yes, it was Scott.” 

Typical. Fucking typical. Scott can't keep a secret to save his god damn life; one time Derek tried to confide in him about Kate's complete and utter inability to cook anything even remotely edible, and two days later Derek found himself sleeping on the couch – all because Scott couldn't keep his _god damn_ mouth shut. 

He should've known the absolute second he ran into Stiles at the bar, the second _friends with benefits_ came tumbling out of his own mouth within Scott's hearing range, that within a matter of days the entire town would know what was going on between Derek and some mysterious spark. 

“I still don't believe it,” Cora says, finally putting down her paint brush to glare at Derek. “Why a spark would want to kiss _you_ -”

“Who said anything about kissing?” Derek sighs and chuffs his feet against the wood of the porch, rolling his eyes. “We're just – friends.” 

“Oooh, right. _Just friends_.” 

“Well, I for one can't wait to meet him!” Laura says genuinely, smiling up at Derek with her pink and purple face. “He'll be there today, right? Have we met him before?” 

Derek had asked Stiles about that, actually, after the blowjob – since it genuinely is weird that he'd never seen the kid at the market when literally every spark within a fifty mile radius goes to the Beacon Hills market to sell their shit, and every spark sells _something_ , be it a physical item or otherwise. 

Stiles had smirked at Derek the way he always does, rolled his eyes, and said, “I do have a booth there, Derek. I've had one for, like, two years. You've just never paid any attention to it because you don't like crap like what I do.” 

Which, of course, piqued Derek's interest and simultaneously drove him in-fucking-sane. How could he have not noticed Stiles in two years of going to the farmer's market every single fucking week? How could he have not _smelled_ him? 

The place is a total madhouse, of course, a billion different scents and people and faces to focus on at once – but even so. Stiles is such a particular person to him, now, a particular scent and a particular voice and face, that it's hard for him to imagine his eyes ever just skirting right over him, like he wasn't there at all. It pisses him off, that past-Derek could be so fucking idiotic sometimes. 

At the actual market, Derek scans the crowd. He sees the same sparks he's been seeing for years, now, sees the same baked goods and homemade glittering scarves, earrings and soft pretzels, lemonade stands, cameras flashing and music blasting and every last inch of breathable air reeking of magic and sugar and body heat. Most of the time, Derek buys a pretzel and a lemonade, makes his way directly down to the quieter booths with books and cool crafty things and avoids all the fanfare in favor of the opposite end of the market. 

It's typical, really typical, that the exact spot that he finds Stiles is the exact section of the market that he hasn't gone to since he was about seventeen years old. Kate always hated this section in particular, and Derek can't say he was ever that wild about it himself – so it's been a while. Last time he was in what market-goers have started calling _The Zen Den_ , he had incense shoved up his nose and was asked if he was feeling better.

Incense-nose aside, he did feel better. But that's aside from the point. The Zen Den is a horrible, horrible place with all kinds of ooga-booga shit that gives Derek and most other wolves the creeps. Mostly it's just humans that venture down there for their buckwheat shots or whatever the hell else goes down around there. He and his entire family and pack steer clear of it – so, of course, that's where Stiles is and of _course_ that's why Derek's never met him before. 

Stiles has his back to him when Derek first sets eyes on him, but he recognizes the tuft of brown hair all spiked up from a distance. Derek narrows his eyes, starts pushing his way through the crowd to see what exactly it is that Stiles is peddling – he almost steps on a ribbiting frog on his way over, gets screamed at by an eleven year old girl about his _huge monster feet_. He passes by a booth selling mummified lizards and nematodes for ninety nine cents each and almost gags at the scent of it, and a booth with a teenage girl dressed in long flowing robes glaring down at some dude's palm, and rolls his eyes so deep into the back of his head he thinks they should go spilling out onto the ground from the force of it. He hates this place. 

When he breaks free from the crowd and sets his eyes on the booth Stiles has set up, he sighs. Deeply. Suddenly it makes a lot of sense why he's never seen Stiles before – even if he actually managed to get lost enough at the market to wind up in the ridiculous _zen find your chi energy lifting inner goddess_ section, he'd have buzzed clear past Stiles' booth without even looking at it. 

Stiles turns around, grins when he sees Derek, and slaps his palms down on the table, over the purple shimmering cloth. “You found me.” 

Derek sighs, again. “Unfortunately, yes.” 

He gestures to his wares, raising his eyebrows suggestively down the rows of cookies and brownies and cupcakes. “Care for a snack?” 

Derek eyeballs the cupcakes, especially – they're garish with pink icing and rainbow sprinkles over the top, and they smell completely and totally off. When his mother makes cupcakes, they smell like sugar and warmth and cake. These cupcakes, and all the other baked goods he can see, smell weird. Like cupcakes from another dimension. “What the hell is in these?” 

Stiles grins, pearly white teeth out on display, and shrugs his shoulders. “Magic, Derek. Want one?” 

“I'm not eating any of this stuff until you tell me what you did to it.” 

“Would I feed you something to harm you, Derek?” He puts his hands on his hips and frowns. “After all we've been through together -”

“I _hardly_ know you-”

“...do you _really_ think I would poison you with a _cupcake_? C'mon.” He picks one up and holds it out to Derek with another grin, tilting his head to the side. “On me!” 

Derek stares at the cupcake in Stiles' long fingers; it looks completely and totally harmless, the most innocuous and simple thing on the face of the planet. But, then again, on the outside and to the untrained eye, Stiles looks much the same. And Derek – he knows better by now. 

After a moment, Derek tugs the cupcake out of Stiles' hands and unwraps it, shaking his head and muttering under his breath about _if I get an extra toe_...Stiles leans forward, that same grin from before still stretched across his face, bouncing on his toes in excitement. 

Derek takes a bite, chews. Stiles watches with huge eyes. Derek swallows. 

“Huh,” he says out loud, glancing down at the rest of the treat in his hand. It, first of all, tastes like an absolutely normal cupcake, in spite of the smell, and it has the same texture and feeling as a normal cupcake, slides down his throat the same as a normal cupcake. “There's absolutely nothing special about this at all, is there?” 

Stiles laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners like always, shrugging. “There sure is, wolfy.” 

“Do you pretend like they have healing properties or something to get people to buy them?” He takes another bite, shoving the remaining bits into his mouth until there's nothing but the wrapper left in his hand. 

“They _do_ have healing properties,” he insists, rolling his eyes, “energy boosters and the like. That one there has calming properties – I make a fortune off of uptight business people looking for something to take the edge off of all the stress. If you were _human_...”

Derek snorts and rolls his eyes. If he were human he guesses he'd be feeling pretty zen right now, high as a kite, messed up enough to buy a crystal ball on a whim. “No wonder you work on this end of the market – no wolf would be caught dead down here to begin with.” He wads up the wrapper from the cupcake and tosses it in a nearby trash can, scanning down the rows of palm readers and yoga instructors with a grimace. 

“ _You_ came down here,” Stiles reminds him, his voice a little softer than normal. Derek clicks his eyes over to lock with Stiles', and he doesn't try to ignore the way staring into the spark's eyes makes him feel, this time. Nice, comfortable, familiar, in spite of the fact that, again, he hardly knows him, at all. 

“Yeah,” Derek agrees, feeling like there's more to be said, but neither of them can pluck up the courage, apparently. Stiles runs his fingers along the length of his purple table cloth, clears his throat awkwardly and looks away with a smile playing on the edge of his lips, while Derek sniffs surreptitiously to gather as much as he can of Stiles' scent. 

“You know -” Stiles starts, turning back to look Derek in the face. “I'm done here in a couple hours. If you wanted to...” he trails off, motioning with his hand a couple of times like it's supposed to mean something. 

Derek understands well enough. “I can take you home,” he offers, as casually as possible with a shrug of his shoulders. “Or – to my place?” 

The spark nods, face splitting into a grin as he does so. Derek tries not to think about how that particular smile of Stiles' makes him feel, how it sends a warm sensation running across his back like Stiles is putting his hands on him for the first time all over again, squashes it down hard and with conviction. He doesn't need to be thinking like that, at all. 

The moment is, perhaps luckily, shattered when he notices some discoloring around Stiles' neck. He squints his eyes a little as he gazes at it – notices that there are at least four pretty sizable scratch marks (not claws – _scratches_ ) starting near the edge of his throat and vanishing downwards into his shirt. Peaking out a bit from his collar there's what looks to be a bit of yellow and purple bruising. 

Derek points. “What happened there?” 

Stiles glances downwards, sees his own wounds, and quickly tugs his collar upward higher with an awkward, forced laugh. “Oh -” he breathes, shaking his head. “Just – you know. Fight stuff.” 

Fight stuff. 

Like Derek said. Those aren't claw marks. Not from a werewolf. They're too thin, too narrow, too sharp. Not going deep enough; because when a werewolf claws someone, they claw to tear flesh clean off the bone, rip organs straight out of a person's body. Those are shallow cuts, like someone reached out and tried, but Stiles jumped back just in time. 

And werewolves aren't any match for sparks. He knows that. Those are from something else, probably the only things Derek has ever heard of to genuinely scare a spark. He's never seen one, of course, because they wouldn't want anything to do with him either way – they only come after the scent of magic. If Stiles really walks around late at night without anyone else with him, then it makes sense they'd try to steal his spark. 

The spark himself looks genuinely uncomfortable, eager for a subject change, so Derek guesses it's good for him when a familiar body slams into Derek's back, nearly sending him sprawling face first on top of a pile of cupcakes – enough that Stiles braces himself with his hand out in front of him, as if expecting to have to levitate Derek in mid-air to save his confections. 

Stiles has levitated people before, he remembers as he straightens himself up; he could probably give a pretty good go at Derek if he wanted to bad enough. Derek makes a mental note to remind Stiles to under no circumstances ever levitate Derek – the thought is way too Paranormal Activity for him to handle. 

Cora is there, with Laura standing on the other side of Derek – both of them look positively ridiculous after an hour at the market. Cora is wearing fairy wings and has shimmering purple strings threaded into her braids, while Laura is still painted up like a butterfly, eating fried dough and gazing curiously down at the brownies in front of her. Derek huffs, give Stiles an apologetic look, and braces himself for the humiliation he knows he's in for now that his sisters have spotted him and the spark. 

“Derek!” Cora says, grinning up at him, flicking her eyes in what she probably thinks is a casual manner over to where Stiles is standing behind the table. “We've been looking for you!”

“I bet you have,” Derek mutters, shoving her shoulder and glowering. 

“Is there something weird in this?” Laura asks Stiles, pointing a powdered sugar finger at the brownies with a suspicious look on her face. 

“That's a stupid question,” Cora shoots at her, glancing again in Stiles' direction with a wide smile. “There's always something weird in spark food, right?” 

Stiles opens his mouth to respond, probably lay out some really witty retort; but his sisters are quicker, too fast for anyone else to ever keep up. “Like what?” Laura asks, leaning her butterfly face down extra close to the snacks and making a face. “Like – dried bugs or something?” 

“Dried bugs?” Stiles repeats the phrase incredulously, a bark of a laugh bubbling up in his throat. “I don't think -”

“I'll try anything once,” Laura says, shoving the list bit of the dough into her mouth and squatting down to get an even closer look at the food without having to actually touch any of it. 

“There's no bugs,” Stiles says slowly, looking at Derek with a perplexed expression on his face. It's clearly the expression of _do you fucking know these people_ , an incredulous smile and a nervous glance in Cora's direction, like he half expects her to flip the table over in disgust. 

Derek huffs, while Cora starts in on a spiel about how Laura once ate five entire worms for free just to see what it would be like, and looks Stiles in the eyes. “These are my sisters.” 

Recognition flickers across Stiles' face as he looks at both Laura and Cora individually for a couple seconds each; he must be able to spot the similarities, now – the hazel eyes, dark hair, cheekbones. Cora stops mid-story and stretches her hand across the table for Stiles to take, and take it he does, with a small smile on his face. 

“I recognize you,” she says to him, gripping onto his hand and holding on a little too tightly, probably from the shock of what it feels like to touch him. Her eyes glaze over for a second, fingers tightening all the more, and Stiles glances down at their interlocked hands, before looking back up to meet her eyes. Cora visibly jerks from the eye contact, releases his hand and takes a step back, probably seeing exactly what Derek himself saw inside of the spark the first time they met. Cora's not usually so winded by sparks, like this, but apparently Derek's not the only one affected by Stiles in somewhat surprising ways. “Um – Sheriff's son, right?” 

Sheriff's son? Derek didn't know that. Mostly because the thought of Stiles being the son of someone so normal and regular, human, sort of doesn't sit right with him. 

“I want a brownie,” Laura says resolutely, pointing to the biggest one of the stack. “Bugs and all.” 

“There's _no bugs_ ,” Stiles repeats for what feels like the zillionth time, “and it's two fifty.” 

Laura fishes out her wallet and produces three crumpled bills, while Cora just stands there glaring at the spark with her arms crossed over her chest, looking altogether like a protective sister that doesn't quite like what she's seeing, here. The expression startles Derek, actually, and he looks at Stiles to see whatever it is that Cora must be seeing.

All he sees is a lanky kid with freckles selling cupcakes and brownies with little magic spells woven into them to help humans calm down. He sets his jaw, confused. 

As soon as Laura has the brownie in her hand, Cora is wrapping her hands around Derek's upper arm and tugging him away with were-strength, hard enough that Derek stumbles backwards in surprise. “Mom's actually looking for you – we should go.” 

“I -” he glances over his shoulder at Stiles, who's standing there with an amused smirk on his face. “Text me when you're done?” 

The spark nods, and then Cora's pulled him deep enough into the crowd that he can't catch Stiles' eyes anymore through the sea of people. Even when they're a good twenty feet away, Cora doesn't let go of her brother's arm, dragging and pulling him, her fingers digging in deep enough that it actually hurts.

Laura bumbles along behind them, eating her brownie quietly, until they finally come to a clearing out of The Zen Den, back on the main dirt road of the market. Cora lets go of Derek's arm, wheels around on him, and says, “there's something strange about that boy.” 

Derek blinks at her, surprised. “Well – he's a spark, so-”

“I mean beyond that, Derek,” she snaps, casting her eyes around the crowd as if to make sure no one's listening in to this conversation. “He's – something about him isn't natural.” 

“Again. Spark.” 

His younger sister sets her jaw, looks pissed, and then wheels onto Laura with a snap of, “do you know what I'm talking about?” 

Laura chews, swallows, deer in the headlights look on her face. For some reason, whenever Derek and Cora have gotten into any kind of argument, Laura has somehow always wound up getting dragged into it as the middle man, the tie-breaker. “Well...” she scuffs her feet in the dirt, pops another piece of brownie into her mouth. 

“He's strange.”

“He's just as strange as any other spark, Cora,” Derek rolls his eyes and gets momentarily distracted by a girl running past him with a handful of colorful balloons. “I think I know him a little better than you do.” 

“Are you telling me,” she steps closer to him, lowering her voice, “that you haven't felt it?” 

Derek shakes his head slowly, side to side. “Felt what?” 

Her eyes narrow slightly as she shakes her head back and forth, like she's trying to find exactly the words to describe whatever it is that Stiles made her feel, whatever vibes he gave off that has her looking so spooked. It's silent for several seconds, Laura standing there with her eyes downcast like she doesn't want to get involved in yet another sibling argument, Cora looking perplexed and freaked out. 

“Felt _what_?” Derek repeats, more insistently this time. 

Cora finally looks up, locks eyes with him. “Danger. When he looked into my eyes, dude, I felt...”

“Scared,” Laura pipes up, brownie long gone. “He's frightening.” 

Derek has to resist the urge to burst out laughing in his sisters' faces – because _Stiles_? The kid uses his powers to take himself to the gas station off exit 319 just so he can mix together flavors of slushie gunk, and bakes ridiculous zen brownies? There's literally so little frightening about him as a person that it's laughable to him, really. 

Although, the laugh dies down in his throat when he remembers the night he first met Stiles; the way he had jumped back, tried to get away on instinct the second that Stiles started walking towards him, the way looking into his eyes feels differently than it usually feels with the other sparks, the way Stiles carries that baseball bat around even though he's never seen another spark have magic inside of an inanimate object like that. 

“You know what we're talking about,” Cora accuses, finger pointed in his face. “I'm telling you, that spark is powerful and spooky and he gives me the heebies.” 

“That was a pretty good brownie, though,” is Laura's expert addition to the conversation as she pats her stomach, probably trying to quell the tension between her siblings the only way she knows how. But that's never, ever worked where Derek and Cora are concerned. 

“Maybe he is,” Derek concedes, ignoring Laura's comment altogether to stare back at Cora's face with his chin raised indignantly. “It doesn't matter either way – we're just friends.” 

“God,” Cora rolls her eyes and throws her hands up in the air. “He's going to sacrifice you to his voo doo gods -”

“ _Cora_.”

“...and I'm going to come to your mutilated body in the woods and say I told you so.” 

Derek is officially and completely done with this conversation. He flicks Cora directly on the nose, much to her indignation and shock, before saying, “ride home with mom,” and stalking off in the opposite direction from where he knows the rest of his family is waiting for them. 

But he can't deny that everything his sisters said has him thinking. Of course there's something weird about Stiles – Derek had been chalking it up to the whole spark thing, hadn't given it much more thought than that, but Cora and Laura did seem genuinely and utterly freaked out by him. 

Like there's just something not right, there. Derek knows the feeling. He's looked into Stiles' eyes enough by now to know that it's off, to know that he feels like he maybe shouldn't be looking at all. It feels sometimes like Stiles doesn't quite belong here, as though he's a mistake or a science experiment gone wrong. Looking into his eyes – there's just something _there_. In a way that Derek can't explain because he doesn't understand magic, doesn't get what a spark truly is, but there's just _something_. It's, like he's said, not the greatest feeling, sometimes.

The difference is that he's gotten the chance to get to know Stiles, unlike Cora or Laura. He knows that there's nothing to be afraid of where Stiles is concerned. The eyes he's getting used to and the the magic he's learning to accept, and, again, it isn't like there's anything serious going on, here. 

But. He wonders. It's hard not to. 

When he meets up with Stiles at the end of the market to find him packaging the snacks he didn't sell into plastic containers, he can't help himself. He has to ask. He has a right to know, after all, if they're going to keep on casually screwing around with each other like this. 

“Not a bad day,” Stiles says, stacking up a pile of containers and cradling them against his chest with a smile. “I made over a hundred dollars! Not bad, not bad.” 

Looking at him, it's once again hard to reconcile this person as being the same person Cora and Laura were made so uncomfortable by – he just seems so...Stiles. Tall and gangly and pale and skinny. Nothing even vaguely threatening about him at all. 

Until he looks up into those eyes. Amber, caramel, whiskey, whatever you want to call them; they're haunting, almost. Unsettling. Derek frowns, and says, “can I ask you something?” 

Stiles nods his head, stepping out from behind the table and leaving the rest of the booth there in tact. He must leave it there week after week on the fairgrounds, until the season is over. “Sure.” 

The wolf bites his lip and avoids eye contact. “I don't know much about sparks,” he confesses, swallowing and shaking his head. “...I don't know what's normal and what isn't...” 

When he chances a glance at the spark's face, he finds it eerily drawn. Not a smile, a smirk, or a frown can be seen. His eyes bear no trace of emotion, his jaw is loose. He looks blank. 

“...but would you tell me, if I asked – if I asked if there's something about you that's...” he searches for the right word, the right way to put this without coming off as too rude, and settles for just motioning with his hand in the air a couple of times. 

Stiles watches the hand as it jerks back and forth, blinks at it steadily as if he's watching something uninteresting, and then looks back up into Derek's face with a small smirk on his face. “Not like other sparks?” 

“Yes,” Derek agrees quietly, not liking at all the way Stiles was so quick to understand what it is he's asking here. If he understands, if he knows, then that probably means that Cora and Laura were right. 

There's something off about Stiles. Wrong. 

The sparks sighs deeply and steps forward, passes off the containers of cupcakes and brownies into Derek's arms and then vanishes back behind his booth, dropping down onto the ground like he's looking for something. Derek stands there, holding the baked goods, frowning down at his own arms, unsure of what's happening now. 

When Stiles comes back up, he has his baseball bat in his hand. Not wielding it, not cocking it for a hit. Just dangling it down from his languid fingers like he always does, all loose and pliant and gentle. He knocks it against the grass a couple of times as he rounds back to the front of the booth, his lips set in a grim line – until the corners twitch in a parody of a smile. “How many sparks do you know that carry a baseball bat around?” 

Derek clears his throat. “None.” 

The spark glances around himself, as the crowds thin and all the other marketers pack up their own things. His face is illuminated only by the string lights from his booth that he still hasn't turned off, and a couple of streetlights glowing yellow twenty or so feet away from where they're standing, and he looks – eerie. He always does. 

When the silence stretches on with Stiles not looking at him, standing there with his bat staring up at the night sky, Derek clears his throat once more. “My sisters say you frighten them.” 

Stiles blinks his eyes to look directly into Derek's, and the wolf stands his ground against the feeling of wrong that drifts around in the air between them. “Do I scare _you_?” 

Slowly, Derek shakes his head back and forth – no. And it's true. Stiles doesn't frighten Derek the way he does his sisters, not like that. 

In some ways, yes. But in even more ways, not at all. 

Stiles drapes his bat across his shoulders, holds it there by the handle with one hand, cocks his head to the side. Says nothing. 

“Why don't you tell me what you need that bat for, then?” 

The spark smiles. “Only so much magic can fit in one person, you know,” he juts his chin in the direction of the parking lot, raises his eyebrows like he's asking Derek if they can leave now. "It had to go somewhere.” 

It's as much of an answer as he's sensing he'll get tonight. In reality, it gives Derek nothing. Nothing except for the knowledge that there is, in fact, something wrong with Stiles (or perhaps not wrong just...different. The issue with that is that _different_ within societal terms has almost always come to mean _wrong_. History has proven as much.) The reasons why, though, are vague and ambiguous. Derek's never heard of a spark with too much magic, too much that they had to shuck it off into something else just so it wouldn't take them over – so it must have something to do with that. 

From the way Stiles' expression is pinched as he starts walking without another word to Derek, the wolf thinks he can guess that the conversation is, for now, over. 

And again. It's not like he really needs to know. If Stiles freaks him out so bad it wouldn't be easy to just drop him off at his own home and never look back. It's nothing serious. So, he's hooking up with a spark that has too much magic, that gives off power and energy waves strong enough that it sends out a warning signal in a wolf's brain – the kid also makes Twilight Zone jokes and drinks slushies until he feels sick. He has nothing to worry about...right? 

Derek bites his lip as he follows behind the spark towards where his black car is waiting for them, all the way at the edge of the parking lot, and has to remind himself for his own sake that, no matter what secrets Stiles doesn't trust a wolf enough to tell, Stiles doesn't scare him. 

It's both true, and not, at the same time. 

“So you're not going to take your sister's advice, then?” Stiles asks once they're at the car, tilting his head to side as he waits for Derek to unlock it. “You're not gonna stay away from me because I give your wolves the willies?” 

Derek frowns. It should be that easy, he thinks, to just turn tail and run. But he just shakes his head, ducking down to slide the containers into the car so he doesn't have to look Stiles in the eyes anymore. 

Back at the house, Stiles' mood has brightened considerably. He drops his bat off in the exact same place as usual, whirls around on Derek with a smile on his face that suggests the conversation at the market and the uncomfortable car ride that followed never happened at all, and says, “so what's your secret wolf kink?” 

Derek nearly drops the containers of treats Stiles asked him to bring inside, staggering forwards and guffawing out a laugh. “My what?” 

“You heard me,” he watches as Derek drops the containers down onto the kitchen table, raises his eyebrows high into his hairline. “All wolves have one. So what's yours?” 

He rounds on the spark, shaking his head slowly side to side with an incredulous smile on his face. “Where are you getting this information?” 

Stiles huffs like this conversation is annoying, taxing. “Everyone knows wolves are kinky as fuck?” 

Derek just shakes his head again, rolling his eyes. “That's just not true, Stiles. I don't have a secret wolf kink – at least none that I'm aware of.” Kate had been so ludicrously vanilla it's not even funny. Plus, he never ventures that far on porn sites. He usually sticks to the classics; man comes over to fix cable box, woman walks out of the shower like _wow!_ It's – whatever. It gets the job done. 

The spark doesn't look impressed, not in the least. He rolls his shoulders a couple of times, plops himself down on the couch, and pulls his phone out. “So I can rest easy knowing you won't start putting in requests for _figging_ any time soon.” 

Derek blinks his eyes a couple of times, wondering if he should say something – staring at the long expanse of Stiles' throat as it's bent over to stare at the bright screen of his phone, the moles dotting along his face. In the end, he decides to admit his sexual inexperience. “Er – figging?” 

The spark lifts his eyes away from his phone, and smirks mischievously. “Yeah. It's, like – shoving a peeled ginger root up someone's ass.” 

He says it so casually, like it's nothing, nothing at all, doesn't even blink as he says it, but – but Derek can't help it – he bursts out laughing. It's the loudest he's laughed in a long, long time, the funniest thing he's heard in a while. Just the thought of it... “ _What_?” 

“Yeah,” Stiles says back with a grin of his own, skirting through what looks from a distance to be his social media accounts, instagram maybe, and shrugging like it's no big deal. 

“Why would anyone -”

“Why does anyone do _anything_ , Derek?” Stiles tosses his phone aside with a plop onto the top of Derek's couch, turning his eyes directly onto the wolf with a sly smile. “Some people like having roots shoved up their ass – who fucking knows?” 

Derek purses his lips around another bout of hysterical laughter; the entire situation, the entire _idea_ of it is only made worse by the look on Stiles' face – the incredulous amusement at how much entertainment Derek is getting out of this conversation. Like he's a six grader with a Playboy magazine. “Is that a spark thing? Is that what you guys would do to each other -” a giggle, “at that forest school you went to? Dig up ginger roots to -”

“Hey, now,” Stiles warns, but his voice is teasing and light, a smile still spread across his face. “I'll have you know most sparks don't get too heavily involved into the sadism and masochism scene, all right? It's not really our taste.” He fixes Derek with a leer. “It's actually more of an alpha werewolf thing, as rumor has it.” 

Derek gets a vision of Lydia shoving a _ginger root_ inside of Jackson and nearly has a seizure from trying to stave off the snickering. Stiles just leans back into the couch, rolling his eyes at Derek's immaturity with a small smile on his face. 

“So are you telling me that Kate Argent never suggested _figging_ to you?” 

“No,” Derek says around the last laugh, running a hand through his hair and then stroking it across his cheek. “That wasn't really – you know.” 

Stiles frowns, and then makes a face Derek would call skeptical. “My suspicions of Kate being a sex dungeon slave master have been falsified.”

“ _What_?” Derek starts laughing again, the thought is so fucking ridiculous. “Jesus Christ, no! We didn't have that kind of – I mean – we were just very...” he holds his hands out, a few inches a part, and then drops them downwards towards his lap while Stiles follows the movement with his eyes. _Straight and narrow._ “She wasn't a slave master. Or – at least not in the sex dungeon sense.” He says the last part under his breath, mostly a mutter to himself that he didn't think Stiles would catch. 

From the look that Stiles gives him afterward from the couch, Derek guesses he heard every word. 

The spark pinches his face together the way he did the last time Kate Argent came up in conversation like this – it's not so much a look of consternation or judgment at Derek being so sexually inexperienced, but it's more like he's trying to cuss something about the wolf in front of him; like there's some mystery about Derek that Stiles wants to get to the bottom of. Which is amusing to Derek, because, really, there's nothing mysterious about himself at all. 

If anyone in this conversation is the mystery, it's the spark who carries half his magic inside a baseball bat. 

After a few seconds of heavy handed silence and staring, Stiles makes a clicking sound with his tongue and pulls himself up off the couch to put his hands on his hips and stare across the room at Derek. “You know what I think we should do on our very first _un-date_ , Derek?” 

The word un-date reminds Derek of Alice In Wonderland and _un-birthdays_ ; a perfectly reasonable comparison, because add a top hat and a scraggly looking suit, and Stiles could pass pretty fucking well for a Mad Hatter. 

“We should fuck with your ex-wife.” His tone is definite, final, the words accented by a hard nod of his head. As if he's strategizing important battle plans. 

Derek blinks up at him. “Fuck with her?” 

“Yeah, Derek. _Fuck_ with her,” he crosses the room to stare out the window, probably zeroing in on the Camaro parked out front. “Let's go to her house and pull shit.” 

“ _Pull shit_?” 

“Yeah!” 

“I don't think I get what you're -”

Stiles throws his hands in the air in frustration, whipping back around from the window to glare in Derek's direction. “Grab your keys, get in the car. It's mischief night.”

\----

Derek honestly doesn't know how he got talked into it. He has half a mind to suspect Stiles of at some point glowing his purple eyes, holding Derek down by the neck, saying _obey...obey...obey..._ again and again to get him to be sitting in this position right now. But, truth be told, he knows Stiles has a stubborn streak in him as tough as granite stone, can talk anyone into doing anything with the right amount of annoyance and persistence. They sat in Derek's car for twenty minutes, arguing back and forth, parked in front of Derek's house – Stiles kept saying _do you want to get your revenge or not_ and Derek kept saying _who ever said I wanted revenge to begin with, Stiles!_

And it all ended up with them parked in Derek's Camaro, across the street from Kate Argent's new house. Of course it did. 

Stiles has his hood pulled up again, his baseball bat sitting in-between his legs where he's perched on the edge of his seat, body angled so he can stare menacingly out at Kate's new house. Derek has been studiously avoiding this place, because it's kind of...nicer. Than his own place. And, as a matter of fact, nicer than the place they had together when they were married. It's kind of a blow to his ego to have to see her fucking mansion and her rock structures and fancy pine tree yard and sleek black SUV parked in the roundabout driveway on brand new black tarmac. Kind of not really something that would've ever helped his sad sack case. 

Derek, on the other hand, is leaning as far back into his seat as he can get, hiding in the cover of darkness, praying to God that if Kate comes out she won't see him like this. It would be one thing if he ran into Kate in public and had to have awkward small talk with her, but it would be another entirely if he got caught with his spark fuck-buddy staking out her house. Just – he doesn't even want to think about it. So he hides. 

“Can you hear what she's doing in there?” Stiles demands, voice quiet and serious. 

“I'm not listening,” Derek confesses – and receives a punch on the arm for it. 

“ _Listen_! We have to know if she's going to be leaving soon or if we're just wasting our time!” 

“We _are_ wasting our time, Stiles,” Derek scrubs his hands down his face, up and down, as though if he rubs hard enough he can vanish from this situation and be back in his safe, warm bed. “Because even if she does leave, I'm not going in there.” 

“Oho,” Stiles contests, “yes you are.” 

“I will not.” 

“Listen to me,” Stiles turns his body in the leather seat with a squeak, the bat drops from in-between his legs to smack against the glove compartment door. He eyeballs Derek with a certain level of intensity that he thinks he should be used to by now, given the amount of time they've spent together – but, still, Derek finds himself pinned to the spot underneath his gaze, immobile. “I've suffered a good many break-ups myself, all right? You think Christopher was the first guy whose car I beat the shit out of?” 

Derek actually hadn't thought about it. He hasn't given much thought to Stiles' ex-boyfriends at all, as a matter of fact, prefers not to altogether. For some reason the thought of Stiles being with more than one person before he met Derek gives him an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach, which is just ridiculous for a series of reasons, but he can't help it. 

“...when a person breaks your heart, you are well within your rights to have a little bit of fun at their expense.” 

“Taking an enchanted baseball bat to a car is your idea of fun?” 

A grin spreads across Stiles' face like a feral wolf, and Derek actually leans back farther in his seat, away from the spark on instinct. “Hell yeah, it is. There's nothing sweeter to me than exacting justice on those who deserve it. But maybe that's just the Sheriff's son in me, talking.” 

“I don't get why you think Kate deserves -”

“Stop right there,” he punches Derek in the arm again, and Derek growls under his breath. “Do _not_ try and defend her to me right now.” 

“I wasn't going to _defend_ her, I was just going to _say_ ,” he bangs his head back against his seat, sighs through his nose. He really doesn't like talking about this. “...she wasn't happy in the relationship, so she got out. I don't get why I have to treat her like the big bad villain for just doing what, in the end, has made her happy.” 

When he chances a glance in Stiles' direction, he sees a very, very unhappy looking spark glaring at him with full force. “She cheated on you,” Stiles says in a low voice. “And kept you as her dungeon sex slave -”

“Oh. My. _God._ ” He pinches the bridge of his nose. Doesn't even try to contest it this time; Stiles will beat a dead horse until there's nothing left but bloody earth underneath his bat. 

“...and she's a heinous fucking bitch?” 

“Which reminds me!” Derek starts in, sitting up in his seat, unclicking his seat belt so he can round on Stiles with narrowed eyes. “How the holy hell do _you_ know the fucking Argents?” 

“Allison's been my best friend for about a year, now, since I got out of school and came back,” Stiles says easily back, shrugging his shoulders and glancing up at Kate's house to make sure she's not coming out of her hole yet. “Kate is just the evil witch that glares at me whenever I come to family functions...” he side-eyes Derek for a couple of seconds, a frown on his face. “A bit after your time, I think.” 

How weird to imagine. What would the situation had been like if Stiles and Derek had met at an Argent function, if he had rekindled his friendship with Allison any sooner and come over for the Christmas Eve dinner? 

His mind instantaneously supplies an image of _him_ being the one cheating, _him_ being the one ending the entire thing by leaving his ring on top of a pile of divorce papers on the kitchen table. It's completely unwanted, unbidden, but the imagine comes to him all the same. It surprises Derek enough that he blinks the thought away, uncomfortable and unsure why it came to exist at all. 

“The point is!” Stiles interrupts his thoughts, drags him back into the present. “I know she's evil – I fucking know she is! And I know she deserves to have someone come in and take a piss in her flower pots!” 

“We are not pissing in any -”

“I will _piss_ in her _flowers_ , Derek.” 

Derek leans forward, sticks his index finger in Stiles' face. “Don't you even _think_ about -”

Stiles slaps the finger out of the air ruefully, leaning his own face closer to Derek's. “I'm going to do it, and you can't stop me!” 

“I _will_ stop you.”

“Oh, yeah? Try me, big guy! I'll set your pants on fire before you even get the claws out!” 

“If you even so much as -”

“It's her!” Stiles interrupts, launching himself downwards into the foot space of the Camaro, somehow managing to bend his entire body into that teeny tiny space with his baseball bat, owl eyes blinking up at Derek hugely. 

Derek whips around, spots his fucking ex-wife walking out with clicking high heeled boots towards her car, tapping away on her cell phone as she does so. Derek takes the time to notice that she's changed her hair since the last time he saw her, eight months ago now, gotten it highlighted and layered, notices a brand new leather coat and a pair of nice fitting jeans. He gets a nasty feeling in the pit of his stomach – in his head he thinks of barbed wire curling around his intestines, squeezing his internal organs, and he feels like he's going to actually be sick from the sight of her, as memories he's been trying to repress come rushing back to him -

And then a long-fingered hand grabs him by the back of the neck and pushes his head down into the steering wheel, hard enough that the car _honks,_ echoing off the houses of the neighborhood.

Derek starts cursing under his breath, Stiles smacks his index fingers to his lips, eyes huge, and then they wait. With his hearing, Derek can hear Kate pause for a second, and then start walking again, a bit slower. The seconds tick by, with the slow heels click-clacking, Stiles huge eyed and mouth parted, Derek wedged against the steering wheel with probably a similar facial expression...

Luckily, he hears the door to her car open and close, hears the engine start up, hears it whirr around the roundabout before coming down the long driveway. Derek stays down with Stiles, hidden in the shadows, unseen, until he's positive that he hears the SUV vanish down the block, far out of sight. 

Then, he reaches downwards and smacks Stiles against the side of the head. 

“Ouch!” He hisses, and Derek knows it's more in annoyance than in actual pain. “What was that -”

“You slammed my head into the _horn_ , you fucking moron! She could've spotted us!”

“And what would she have done?” Stiles pulls himself up out of his squat in the footspace as much as he can before reaching up to open the passenger door to Derek's car. “ _Help me, officer, a spark and a wolf are parked in a car_!” 

“Loitering! _Stalking_!” 

“Oh, whatever,” Stiles hefts himself up and forwards, palming his hands on the grass beside the sidewalk to crawl lengthwise out of the car. Derek watches his long body as it stretches along the leather, spilling out onto the grass slowly. “Come on, let's just do this.” 

“I'm not doing it,” Derek says resolutely. “I'm refusing.” Seeing Kate in the flesh again has thickened his resolve; reminded him of the fact that she's not some memory figure lurking on the edges of his mind, she's an actual person who actually ruined his fucking life and broke his heart. He doesn't want to deal with it. He wants to go home. 

Stiles takes his bat out of the car, leans down and glares inside at Derek. “Then I'll go inside by myself and go _really_ nuts.” 

“Stiles...” The spark slams the door shut, swings his bat around in the air a couple of times like practice, and then starts whistling as he rounds the front of the Camaro. “Stiles, don't go in there.” 

He just shrugs, whistling louder, his bat perched across his shoulders as he crosses the street without even looking both ways. 

If there's one thing Derek knows, and knows for god damn sure, it's that Stiles isn't a man of bluffs. He will honest to God break into that house and do whatever the Hell he feels like, whether or not Derek tags along for the ride. The defining variable, here, is that if Derek goes along as well, he'll at least be a voice of reason to stop Stiles from going completely off the deep end with this. 

The use of excessive force wouldn't stop a spark. The use of claws wouldn't stop a spark. Derek has only one fucking option. 

He slams his head into the steering wheel once more – _hooonkk_ – growls underneath his breath, and then throws his door open with a caw of _wait up!_

Stiles is already trudging up the driveway by the time Derek catches up to him. He doesn't look surprised to see Derek sidling up beside him – just raises his eyebrows and nods like he knew it, smirking to himself as the distance between them and the front door gets smaller and smaller. 

“Just to be clear,” Derek starts as soon as they're on the steps, “we're not going to be in there for any longer than five minutes.” 

“Um,” Stiles shoots back, narrowing his eyes, “how the _fuck_ am I going to rearrange her entire kitchen in five minutes or less?” 

Derek turns his eyes heavenward, asks God why he cursed him so. “And don't break anything.” 

Stiles huffs as they approach the door, keeps his bat perched on his shoulders. He stretches his free hand forwards, rests it on the doorknob, and -

“The lock is included in the pool of things you're not allowed to break, Stiles.” 

The spark just levels his eyes on Derek, tilting his head to the side and smirking. “Who said anything about _breaking_ the lock?” 

Derek frowns. He watches as Stiles puts his hand on the doorknob again, listens in disbelief as he hears a rattling noise without Stiles even having to turn his fingers on the knob at all. The rattling continues, and Stiles leans down a bit, closer to the knob while he furrows his brow as if in concentration – there's more rattling, more Derek standing there with wide eyes, and then – click. 

The door pops open. Just like that. 

Derek gets the familiar spooky chill up his spine he gets whenever Stiles does something like that, but shakes his head and soldiers forwards after Stiles. 

The spark doesn't creep forward like a burglar normally does in the movies. He literally just stalks inside, dragging his bat along on the nice hardwood floors, flicking on the living room light. As if he owns the place. 

Derek jumps at the brightness, lurches forwards to smack the light switch again as Stiles moves away from it. “Could you try,” he breathes as soon as the light goes out, “to be _discrete_?” 

“Right,” Stiles says back, picking a book up off at table in the foyer. He scans the cover of it from the light spilling in through the window, makes a face like he's entirely unimpressed, and then drops it onto the floor with a smack. “ _Discrete_.” 

As Stiles is walking away, Derek trails after him, picks up the book, sets it back exactly where it was before Stiles touched it, huffing out a sigh. 

“Not all of us can see in the dark,” he's saying now, and his voice has an echoing quality to it – probably from the god damn high ceilings in this idiotic fucking mansion. “So – don't mind me.” 

Several beats pass in silence, wherein Derek strokes his eyes all around the new life that Kate's built for herself ever since she left Derek. The place is nice, which has already been established; like, magazine nice. Flower pots and hardwood and yellow walls, a carpeted winding staircase, expensive looking art hanging on the walls. Funny, Derek thinks somewhat sourly; when they were together Kate showed absolutely zero interest in art whatsoever, turned her nose up at Derek's suggestions to go to museums or art shows.

He's breathing in her familiar scent, getting reacquainted with it somewhat masochistically, when an ethereal purple glow starts spreading from somewhere to his left, where Stiles is standing. Derek looks over as the smell of magic and Stiles plows through Kate's scent like a bulldozer, and what he sees makes him freeze in place. 

Like he's said a hundred times by now, Derek has never known very much about sparks. Even though he's been enjoying the company of one on several evenings, now, he still doesn't know very much, because the spark hardly ever tells him anything. He knows what television shows show him, what fairytales and legends say, and there's no telling how much of that is fictionalized. 

One thing he knows, though, is that when a spark pulls their actual spark up out of their body, holds it in their hand or lets it hover up above their heads, it means something. Something pretty fucking serious, actually. 

Serious enough that Derek can only stop and stare, spellbound, struck entirely still, as he stares at Stiles' back, at the shimmering purple ball swaying gently back and forth right beside his head. Stiles seems preoccupied with something, rifling around in a drawer and pulling out various knick knacks, scattering them all over the place in a mess that Derek will probably have to clean up in a couple of seconds, but he must feel the eyes on him, because he turns around and blinks in Derek's direction. 

The eyes, this time, look hollow. Almost dead in a listless stare. As if pulling the spark out of him to give himself some light to see has ripped something of himself out, as well. 

It's probably the most intimidated Derek has ever been by Stiles or any other spark, for that matter, possibly the most intimidated he's ever been by anyone, ever. Maybe even including Lydia. 

“What?” Stiles asks him, voice amused. When Derek doesn't answer except to keep on staring, staring, staring, Stiles flicks his eyes up to the spark in the air and then makes a noise of understanding, before shrugging his shoulders and turning around to wander off towards the staircase. “Kinda like The Legend of Zelda, right?” 

Derek watches Stiles breeze past him, magic leaking off of him in waves upon waves, and the purple puff trails after him jerkily, like it has no other choice but to follow its owner. Actually, pretty much exactly like the Legend of Zelda, in terms of aesthetic. 

“Should you be -” Derek finds his voice, but it's hoarse. “...should you be doing that? In front of me?” 

He starts following Stiles up the stairs, creaking along four steps behind him, keeping a safe distance from the spark as it jostles in mid-air. The thing gives him the creeps, first of all, and second of all he doesn't want to risk it flying into his face or trying to jump inside him or something like that. He's not sure that it can happen, but the thought of being killed by magic is enough to keep him at a safe distance. 

“Why not?” Stiles asks conversationally. The stairs narrow up into a hallway, so the purple glow gets brighter, more vivid, casting a shadow of Stiles' long body along the wall. 

“Aren't you worried that I'll...” 

“You're not going to eat my spark, Derek,” Stiles says this like he's annoyed at the accusation. In spite of the fact that it's actually a completely normal thing for any spark to worry about in the presence of another person? 

Sparks can't live without their _spark_. If anything happens to that stupid little ball of light inside of them, if it gets lost or hurt, if it can't find its way back inside its host before it's been too long, then the spark dies. Simple as that. Letting it out of their bodies and putting it in the open for anyone to reach out and grab, steal, destroy...

It's pretty much like playing in traffic and praying a semi-truck doesn't come along. There are things out there, one thing in specific, lurking around the edges of the woods, that would barrel down that front door and steal the spark out of mid-air before Stiles could as much as fucking blink. Maybe Derek could stop it - matter of fact, he knows he could - but it's still too dangerous of a risk? 

“I'd feel more comfortable if you...”

Stiles rounds on Derek before the wolf has a chance to finish his sentence, and as he whips around in the hallway, the spark buzzes in the air a little, zooming forwards to spin around Stiles' head and then come to a stop right above his left shoulder. Like it, too, is glaring in Derek's direction. “Does it freak you out?” 

Derek glances at the purple ball, and frowns. “It freaks the hell out of me.”

In nothing but neon purple light, Stiles' dead eyes look even more disturbing. Like dark holes in his head, emotionless and void, in spite of the huge smile that he lets cross his face. He looks like a villain in a movie, and Derek sets his eyes back onto the spark just so he doesn't have to look at him any longer while he's like this. “It really does, huh?” 

“Yes, Stiles. This entire situation, frankly!” 

“Oh, relax,” Stiles rolls his dead eyes, jerks his shoulder upwards to knock into his spark gently, before whirling around to stalk further down the carpeted hallway. “I trust you not to fuck with my spark – so you should trust me with sabotaging your ex-wife's life.”

Derek has no choice. He scratches at the back of his neck, wonders how the literal Hell he went from watching shitty documentaries on Netflix in bed to breaking into Kate Argent's house with an unruly spark, before puffing out a breath and following Stiles down the hallway towards what must be the master bedroom. 

By the time Derek gets inside, Stiles is already pulling books off the shelf, sending them scattering down onto the ground with _thump, thump thumps_ , his spark bouncing happily up and down on his shoulder, making the glow jerky like a strobe light against the white walls of the bedroom. “Stiles, do you have to -”

“Let me ask you something,” Stiles interrupts, throwing a dictionary down onto the ground with mirth before turning around to fix Derek with another of his unsettling stares. “Do you recognize anything in this room?” 

The wolf glances around himself, frowning as he takes in the altogether unfamiliar sight of it. A four poster bed with sheets he's never seen before, a huge painting of a fox with yellow eyes glaring out at him eerily he's never seen before, garishly red curtains draped from he windows that he's never seen before. 

Then, on what must be her dresser. A bottle of perfume. He steps towards it involuntarily, and he doesn't miss the way Stiles zeroes in on the action, watching Derek's every single move. Next to the perfume there's a pile of rings and a necklace tree, and every single last piece is something he recognizes – some it is things he's seen hundreds, if not thousands of times, since he was a teenager. The sight of these things right in front of his face, like ghosts from his old life come back to taunt him, has him setting his jaw and feeling like he wants to run away. 

He already has been running. He hasn't really stopped running from everything, not since the day he woke up alone after eight years of always having someone there. He reaches out to touch one of the necklaces hanging down, the most familiar; a crystal dangling from a sleek silver chain - 

A presence comes up beside him, rips the necklace off the tree before Derek even has a chance to brush his fingers against it. Derek turns to tell Stiles to cut it out and put it back, but...it's pretty much too late for that. 

Stiles throws the necklace down onto the ground and stomps on it. Derek hears the crystal shatter, watches in horror as the spark lifts his sneaker up off the ground to reveal the ruined and destroyed necklace in all its glory. 

“ _Stiles_!” He chastises, bending down to see if there's anything to be salvaged. But of course, of course there isn't. It's completely and utterly irreparable, in a million pieces, crushed almost into dust. “Do you have any idea how much -”

Stiles reaches forwards and grabs more necklaces off the tree, throws an entire handful of them across the room. They scatter like confetti, flying off in different directions and making tiny little clack sounds whenever they land on a hard surface, bounce back against a wall. 

“Come on, Derek,” he taunts, picking up the bowl of rings and flinging it as hard as possible against the wall – it leaves a hole in the dry wall before it smashes onto the ground. “Do something!” 

All Derek really wants to do is pick up the jewelry, gather it back into his hands and neatly put it back the way Kate would have it, the way she has to have every thing so fucking structured all the time. Every thing exactly where she put it last, nothing even an inch or centimeter or millimeter out of place. 

“What else, huh?” Stiles demands, moving away from the wolf's side to step farther into the room, spreading his hands out to the rest of the furniture and personal effects – the rest of the things that Stiles could destroy right now, if he felt like it. 

“We really don't have to -”

“Derek,” Stiles' spark pulses for a second, making the room brighter. “I didn't drag you out here just so you could stand there looking like a martyr while I do all the work!” Before Derek has a chance to stop him, Stiles is crossing the room and taking the purple light with him, throwing the doors to Kate's huge closet open, and gesturing to the rows and rows of dresses, blouses, and jeans neatly folded over hangers. “We came here for one reason -”

“ _You_ came here for one reason,” Derek mutters under his breath, earning a dead-eyed glare for his efforts as he comes to stand closer to where Stiles is leering at all the clothes lined up for him to fuck around with. “Don't touch any of that, Stiles, that's where I have to draw the line.” If there's one thing in life that Kate loves, really and truly, it's her clothes. Even when they were together, Derek always knew that she honest-to-god cared more about her clothes than she did about Derek on certain days. To the point where he's certain she would've ran to the closet to rescue her favorite dresses before she'd even think about where Derek was in the event of a fire. 

"Oh, why?” Stiles hisses, reaching a hand out and stroking the tulle of a dress. “Is it _important_?” 

“Stiles...”

“Certain irreplaceable numbers in here, huh?” He picks a lace red dress up in its hanger, hold sit out for him to inspect with a curled upper lip. 

“Stiles – give me that.” 

The spark curls the dress to him protectively, takes a step away from Derek. “Unless you plan on ripping it to shreds...”

“Christ, Stiles,” Derek shakes his head and lets loose a frustrated growl – Stiles doesn't even flinch at it, just blinks steadily at him with a small smile on his face. “Why are you so hellbent on getting me to – _do this_.” He gestures to the room at large, the fact that he's standing in his ex-wife's bedroom, in his ex-wife's house, the fact that he broke in here with a spark. 

“Because!” Stiles shoots back in a petulant tone of voice, narrowing his eyes. “ _You're_ the one who had to spend the last eight months of your life wondering what it was you did wrong – weren't you?” 

Derek swallows, looks away. Stile takes that in the affirmative. 

"And _you're_ the one who was left to pack up and sell the house, and _you're_ the one who gets all the sad pitying looks from everyone in this whole entire town, aren't you?” 

“It's not like -”

“Did she or did she not treat you like absolute trash, Derek?” 

The argument deflates out of him, all his fight vanishing down the drain in one fell swoop at hearing Stiles say that. Because – yes, she did. She always did. It wasn't just when she started cheating on him, and it wasn't just when she divorced him and dragged him into court, and it wasn't just when she waited for Derek to be away at his parents' house to pack all her shit out of their house and just vanish. All of that stuff was shitty, and horrible, and not at all what Derek deserved after eight. Fucking. Years. 

But even in the actual relationship. Even when they were just teenagers, she never treated him the same way that he treated her. Derek was like a burden to her, he thinks, this person that she got stuck with and didn't have the balls to say no to, didn't have the courage to look him in the eyes and say that she just wasn't interested anymore. 

For fuck's sake, she had the nerve to tell him that _he_ wasted _her_ life, when it was the other way around – wasn't it? Derek actually loved her, he really honestly did, for whatever deranged god damn reason. He was crazy about her, he treated her better than she ever deserved, gave her everything she ever asked for, and what did he ever get in return? 

Stiles holds the dress out to him with a look on his face that suggests he knows exactly what Derek's thinking about, like the energy shift in the room is palpable to him (and it really probably is, for him and his spark.) 

Maybe because he's pissed off, now, or maybe because Stiles has been goading him into it all night, or maybe because the spark is just flat out a bad influence...but he takes the dress. He takes it, and tears it clean it half with the most satisfying _rrrriiiippppp_ sound he's ever hear in his life, until he has one half of the dress in each hand, dangling limply from his fingers, before tossing it onto the ground. 

“Yeah!” Stiles shouts, and on his shoulder the purple spark is bouncing happily again. “More!” 

Derek looks down the row of clothes and spots a very familiar silver sequin number right beside where Stiles is standing – he reaches over the Spark's shoulder and grabs it, ripping it off the hanger without caring whether or not it gets damaged in the process. He holds it out for Stiles to get a good look at, and it shimmers in the light from Stiles' spark. “She wore this to our last anniversary dinner,” Derek confesses to Stiles in a biting tone of voice, shaking his head in disgust. “I had to get rid of all my clothes that reminded me of her, you know? But she can just – keep this. Wear it. Like it's _nothing_ to her.” 

Stiles sets his jaw, nods once. “Tear it up.” 

Derek hesitates for a moment – taking just one second to remember how she looked in it. How the shimmers from the bodice left silver reflections on her tan arms in the restaurant, how nice she had done her hair, the red color she wore on her lips that night...

Apparently fed up with Derek's trips down memory lane, he reaches forward and rips at it himself; of course not even half as effectively as Derek can do with his claws and werewolf strength, but he makes a pretty sizable tear in the top half of the dress. “This thing is hideous, anyway,” he says matter-of-factly. “Come on! Shred it!” 

Seeing as how the thing already has an irreparable rip in it to begin with from Stiles' hands, he doesn't really see the point in _not_ shredding it up with is claws. True, he doesn't necessarily have to, and true, he could tell Stiles that that's more than enough mischief for one night and herd the spark back out to the car to leave this entire thing behind and wash his hands of the situation before it turns bad...

Instead, he flicks his claws out, and starts tearing the silver dress apart. 

After that, it's pretty much just a mess. Stiles pulling out articles of clothing and throwing them in Derek's direction with a _and what about this!?_ And Derek telling some story about a time he remembers Kate wearing the particular item, before Stiles goes _destroy it!!!_ in a voice that sounds a lot like Optimus Prime from Transformers, and Derek – stupidly, so fucking idiotically – just goes along with it. By the time five minutes have gone by, the entire floor is littered with scraps of clothing, sequins, tulle, lace, nylon fabrics, jeans ripped into two separate legs, her closet half empty, hangers strewn all over the place. And Derek and Stiles are just standing there in the middle of it all in a purple haze, Stiles looking unbelievably pleased with himself and somewhat proud, while Derek...well. 

He feels light, actually. More free and relaxed than he's felt in a very, very long time, now. He guesses that Stiles might actually know a thing or two about energies and therapeutic releases, outside the realm of enchanted cupcakes for humans. 

For a matter of seconds the two of them don't move or say anything, glaring down at the mess they've both made together, a pause in the timeline of the night for both of them to kind of decide where the actual Hell they're supposed to go from here – and Stiles makes the decision for Derek. 

“You know,” he starts, scratching at the side of his face as he takes a tentative step closer to Derek, sneaker landing in a pile of red satin. “This whole thing has actually sort of...” and since it's a Stiles idea, since this is _Stiles_ we're talking about – the kid who has no sense of boundaries whatsoever – the next words out of his mouth don't surprise Derek in the least. “...turned me on.”

Out of old habit, Derek sniffs the air. He doesn't bother for subtle, not in front of Stiles who knows exactly what he's doing anyway and grins at the sight of the wolf tilting his nose up to get a better scent. He smells Stiles' magic, the spark, coffee and caramel and ash and a rainy forest, he smells Kate underneath it all, just barely, and then – there we go. Stiles' arousal. Gentle, now, not hot or steaming or desperate just yet, but there all the same. 

Another old habit of Derek's – getting turned on just from the smell of someone else. 

Stiles takes another step closer, cocking his head to the side and exposing the long column of his throat for Derek to take a nice long look at, to taunt him, more like, to get his wolf-mind surging and thinking about claiming and marking and fucking. He eyes the scratch marks and bruising poking out from his shirt again for a second, and then clicks his eyes away just as quickly – he doesn't need to be thinking about how easily Stiles' pale skin colors and bruises, but he does anyway. 

And because Derek is wound up already to begin with. Because he's just spent the last ten minutes tearing clothes apart with his bare hands and claws, accessing a primal animalistic part of him and letting it take over without thinking about the consequences – he's not really in the right headspace anymore to be making sound judgments. A sound judgment would be, _hey, you know, let's actually not have gay sex in my ex-wife's bedroom after we just tore the place apart._

A reasonable person would think that, would grab Stiles by the arm and haul him out to the car to take care of him in his own territory, chastise him for even thinking about doing something as wrong and messed up as this. As wrong as Stiles leaning forward to kiss Derek on the lips in a sea of Kate Argent's destroyed clothes, as wrong as Derek letting Stiles run his fingers along the side of his neck, letting Stiles make him feel that spark energy tingling up his back again while he can still smell Kate in muffled spurts of floral perfume and orange rinds. 

A reasonable person. Sort of like what Derek was when he was a nine to five zombie drone eating chicken and broccoli two times a week before curling up into bed all by himself in his empty house. Stiles might just be beating that part straight out of him, using his baseball bat to smack every last ounce of reasonable out of his head and replacing it with his own mischievous, wrong ideas. 

Derek guesses there's just something about how wrong it feels that makes it also feel, perversely, _right_. Hot and dirty and somewhat disgusting - atrocious, really. Pornographically _good_. 

So, he doesn't shove Stiles off him. He grabs the spark by the back of the neck and crashes their lips together, hard, teeth smacking into teeth and lips struggling to get the angle right. Derek slides his hand up under Stiles' shirt and feels the warmth of his skin, feels the tingling on his fingertips, listens to the way Stiles' breath quickens through his nose like he's been waiting for this and can't hold back how excited he is now that it's happening. The spark itself hovers dangerously close to Derek's face, still perched on Stiles' shoulder like that's its _spot_ , glowing brightly behind Derek's closed eyelids as the kiss deepens, and deepens...

Derek slides both hands down Stiles' hips, fingers along the waistband of his jeans and his boxers, traces the outline of his happy trail, while Stiles wraps his arms around Derek's neck and starts tugging him towards where the wolf knows the bed is on instinct. It's backwards walking for Stiles, and with his eyes closed and his lips smashed against Derek's, tongue inside another person's mouth, it's probably not so easy to see exactly where it is he's going; it's a surprise to both of them when the backs of Stiles' knees slap into the mattress, enough that Stiles' eyes fly open and he pulls away from Derek's mouth. 

Derek keeps his hands on Stiles' hips while the spark reaches down to undo his pants, cursing under his breath and fumbling with his long fingers. He clears his throat, feels like normally people don't ask (or at least in porn they don't) but he needs to know so he can get ready for whatever it is they're about to do - “are you – um...”

Stiles glances up at him as he starts shoving his pants down his legs, one eyebrow raised. 

The wolf feels his cheeks flush hot and can't help feeling like a virgin. In a way, he guesses he is. “...do you have a preference?” 

The sparks blink at him – both the person and the orb of light – in confusion. Stiles shucks his pants and boxers all the way off over his shoes, and then makes a noise like _ahhh,_ smirking to himself as he straightens back up to his full height and wraps his arms around Derek's neck again. “No – I'm either, depending. Doesn't matter, not -” he kisses Derek, all hot and desperate and thick, before pulling off with a pop, “I don't want to – just – just touch me, okay?” 

Derek can do that. 

Stiles pulls himself onto the bed, keeping a firm grip on Derek's neck, mouths locked together, so the wolf has no choice to follow by the mouth as the spark goes down. No choice but to keep on kissing him, holding onto him, doing exactly as he wants Derek to do, no questions asked. 

When they pull apart, Derek glances downwards at Stiles' lap without thinking about it – catches sight of his cock all hard and flushed and angry, and swallows nervously. “Okay, so -”

“Is this about to be another one of your speeches?” Stiles demands in a raspy voice, scratching gently at the hairs on the base of Derek's neck. “I sort of figured you'd never touched another guy's dick before, Derek, stop being so bashful about it.” 

In spite of Stiles' instructions, Derek blushes. “I just – I'm not sure what to -”

Stiles smiles at him, genuinely. The spark on his shoulder glows a little brighter as the smile spreads wider, and Derek wonders just how much the spark and Stiles are connected, just how separate they really are. “It's okay. You know what feels good on yourself, right?” His voice is surprisingly not condescending, and it doesn't make him feel like some inexperienced little baby that needs help giving a handjob. The combination of his fingers still scratching behind his neck and he timbre of his voice and the purple glow of his spark...it makes Derek feels safe. 

In spite of the god damn ridiculously stupid surroundings, Derek feels comfortable with Stiles. Not judged or looked down on. 

So, he nods, and Stiles smiles wider. He pulls his long fingers off of the wolf's neck and reaches them down to grab at Derek's hand where it's resting on the bed spread right beside Stiles' thigh. He picks it up, palm facing him, and hacks a wad of spit up on Derek's skin. Derek wrinkles his nose playfully, tugging his hand away like he's disgusted. 

“Don't go easy on me,” Stiles insists right before Derek drops his hand. “I like it fast.” 

Derek has sort of gotten the sense that in all ways, in every single aspect of his life, Stiles _likes it fast_. He likes to play it loose, dangerous, jumps into things without taking even a half a second to consider the ramifications. And Derek never thought of himself as like that – he never really saw himself as the type to ever jump without looking, but, well. 

Here he fucking is. Wrapping his fingers around a spark's dick in his ex-wife's bed. 

Stiles breathes out hotly as Derek strokes him up and down – just a little slow, at first, getting a feel for what it's like to have someone else in his hand and not himself. He guesses it's more or less the same, in a manner of speaking, though Stiles is longer where Derek is thicker. Softer skinned, maybe, more pink. The spark doesn't complain at the pace; just drops his head back and bites his lip, his spark nudging against his neck like it's comforting him. It's actually really bizarre, Derek thinks, as he watches the purple light dance along Stiles' jawline and throat, like it has a mind of its own. It might, actually, now that Derek thinks about it. Which would be...weird. 

Spooky. Definitely spooky. 

He casts his eyes away from the light and focuses on making Stiles feel good. It's not as hard as he thought it would be – he was having visions of being the one guy on earth incapable of giving a half decent handjob, of Stiles going _Jesus Christ your hands are nasty and chapped and calloused and it feels like sandpaper is rubbing at me_ or something along those lines. Classic first-time thoughts; his first time with Kate, he thought he was going to come way too early and instead nearly killed himself holding off on it. He's not a very good stress performer, usually. 

Stiles spreads his legs wider, braces himself with one hand behind his back on the bed and the other on Derek's shoulder, panting with tiny whimpers from the base of his throat, eyes screwed shut. 

“Is it okay?” Derek asks self-consciously, gripping tighter and tugging a bit faster the way Stiles said he'd like it. Stiles' response is a squeak and a nod, his long fingers digging into Derek's shoulder hard enough to leave bruises, were he human. 

Derek's hand and Stiles' dick start making a sound the faster he goes, the familiar slap of skin he's gotten used to hearing all by himself in the quiet of his bedroom after a boring porn video featuring a mail man. It almost sounds the same, here in Kate's bedroom, except...not. It's a much, much different sound when it's accompanied by the noises Stiles makes, the way the spark twitches and writhes so easily underneath nothing but Derek's hand. It sounds better. Definitely much better. 

“Fuck,” Stiles hisses, dropping his head down onto Derek's shoulder with a shudder. “I'm close, just – don't – stop,” and Derek doesn't. It's distracting that in this position, Stiles' spark is so close to him, nearly touching the bare skin of Derek's arm as it bounces against the side of Stiles' face again and again, like it's egging him on or...kissing him? 

It's not a secret when Stiles' orgasm builds up to a climax. Derek doesn't have to ask, doesn't have to feel the tell-tale signs of his body tightening, doesn't need Stiles to say anything. The spark just starts to – pulse. Bright purple, brighter purple, even brighter purple, backed up by Stiles' hungry, desperate panting, and Derek is amazed that the sight of it doesn't have his hand stilling in shock or surprise. By the time Stiles is coming with a cry into Derek's neck, the spark is almost blinding this close to Derek's eyes. He has to squint against it, drop his own head down onto Stiles' shoulder. 

The spark settles. Fades into its usual light glow, edges along Stiles face. Poking him, it looks like. 

Stiles lifts his head and shifts a little to back away from Derek, giving him a lazy smile. And then, just like that, he holds the palm of his hand out, and the purple orb jumps down into it before vanishing in a puff. 

Derek would be concerned, but the second the spark vanishes from his hand, Stiles' eyes glow purple for just a moment, like it's settled back inside of him. 

It's dark in the room without the glow, and Derek is about to lean down and kiss Stiles on the lips and tell him they should probably get out of here...when he hears the front door open and close.

Stiles hears it too. He leaps forward towards the floor, pawing for his pants and boxers, while Derek curses out a muttered _fuck_ , begins on a litany of _I was distracted I couldn't hear her holy shit_ pacing back and forth across the room like a caged animal. There's no way out of here, he thinks, literally no fucking escape – he gets a vision of himself and Stiles being taken in by Stiles' father and - 

Stiles pulls his boxers on and just throws his pants up over his shoulder, while Derek listens to the sound of Kate's heels clicking in the foyer, the lights being flicked on. 

Both Stiles and Derek freeze for a second as a yellow glow comes from up the stairs, straight down the hallway. Deer in the headlights. Stiles in boxers, come all over his t-shirt.

“Fuck,” Derek says resolutely, and Stiles grabs him by the hand. “What are we going to -”

“Shhh,” Stiles hisses, grabbing his bat from where he perched it up against the wall beside the closet. 

“ _How_ are we going to -”

“Shh!” Stiles starts over towards the sliding glass doors leading to the balcony, clicks the lock open as easy as he did the one on the front door – as he slides it open, Derek has never been more thankful in his entire life that Kate isn't a werewolf and doesn't have super hearing. Holy shit. 

“I can't go to jail,” Derek is saying, now, as Stiles creeps out onto the balcony overlooking the back of Kate's house. “I never should've let you talk me into this, how could -”

Stiles squeezes Derek's hand where he has it locked into his, slides the door shut behind them as slowly as he opened it, shutting it with a click. 

“Are we just gonna hide out here?” Derek demands, gazing around himself. Stiles starts doing much of the same, peering over the edge of the balcony, gazing down the sides of the house like he's searching for something to use. But there's nothing. There's no fire escape, of course there wouldn't be, and there's no ladder, no vines, no nothing. Derek could very easily just leap off the balcony and probably land on his feet with minimal injury, but, Stiles on the other hand...spark he may be, but he's still got a human, frail body. Even if Derek just cradled him up in his arms and leaped himself, there's no guarantee that he wouldn't land on top of him, break his leg. 

But leaving him behind just isn't an option. 

He hears Kate coming up the stairs, flies into an even bigger panic. “She's going to have me thrown in prison,” he moans, covering his face with the hand that isn't locked into a vice grip by Stiles'. “I'm going to have to pay for all those ridiculous dresses a second time around, I -”

“No,” Stiles says firmly, leaning over again to get a better look at just how far down the drop is. It's pretty far – the high ceilings on the first floor made damn sure of that. “I have an idea. But you have to kinda trust me.” 

Stiles clicks his eyes over to lock them with Derek's, as the sound of Kate's footsteps in the hallway get closer, and closer... 

“Do you?” Stiles asks. 

Derek swallows. He doesn't have a choice. In under ten seconds Kate is going to be flicking the light on in her bedroom and seeing what Derek's done to all her things, seeing him standing out here with a spark, and he – well. He has to trust Stiles if he wants to get out of this one. In spite of the fact that Stiles is something of a stranger, in spite of everything they haven't told each other, in spite of what Cora said to him about how odd he is the other day...he doesn't have a choice. So he nods. 

Without a warning, Stiles is climbing up over the railing of the balcony, one leg over, and then the second, quickly. “Come on,” he says, tugging on Derek's hand as he uses it to keep himself balanced, to keep from topping over the edge to a certain death on the ground. “Come _on_!” 

He doesn't have the time to hesitate, so he doesn't. He flings his leg over the railing, uses his free hand to wrap onto the metal bar behind himself as he does the other, and gives Stiles a look. They're both hanging there, off the side of Kate Argent's house, staring down at the harsh pavement down below themselves. “You want to jump,” Derek says, glancing behind himself. Kate's not in her bedroom yet, but she's seconds, maybe milliseconds away from seeing them. 

Stiles doesn't seem phased. “Have to. Let go, and trust me.” 

Derek curses under his breath, hopes to God that he he doesn't fucking get Stiles killed by doing something so absolutely idiotic, hopes Stiles has an actual plan here, and lets go of the railing and Stiles' hand to send them both sailing face forward towards to the ground. 

He only has so long to panic, only has so long to watch as the ground gets closer and closer, to listen to Stiles mutter something under his breath in mid-air – and then they're stopping with a jolt.

Literally two inches from the ground, his nose almost touching the fucking concrete surrounding the edge of Kate's house, they just stop. He glances sideways, finds Stiles' purple eyes wide, staring at the ground with his free hand palm down, bat clattering to the ground, before he glances in Derek's direction as well. Stiles caught them, then. 

He did say he's levitated people before after all. 

They drop the last two inches and Stiles groans like he's in pain, but there's no time for investigation. Derek can hear clear as a bell Kate flicking her bedroom light on, hears her sharp intake of breath, and he reacts on instinct. 

He grabs Stiles by his arm and hauls him up to his feet, much to the spark's protests, and runs as fast as he can with Stiles in tow back to where the Camaro is parked on the side of the road. They have to sort of leap over a series of decorative boulders that Kate's set out in her bizarre yard, dodge around pine trees, while Stiles laughs maniacally behind him like this is the most fun he's ever had in his life. 

Once they're inside the Camaro, Derek guns the engine, and Stiles laughs even harder. 

“God damn!” He shouts, as the Camaro peels down the neighborhood street with a boom from the engine and a _skkrrtt_ noise against the concrete – a sound he thought only happened in movies. Seeing as how what he just did, what his entire night consisted of, it's not that surprising. “Oh, holy shit, man, I'm -” he holds his hands up in front of himself, palms to his face, and Derek glances over to find that his long fingers are shaking. “That was one hell of a rush!”

Derek focuses on the road, focuses on getting them the hell away from Kate Argent's house at a speed that should have him getting pulled over for a ticket in any second. “You are out of your _god damn_ mind,” he accuses bitterly. “I cannot _believe_ you talked me into that.”

“Stop with that, will you?” Stiles rolls his eyes from the passenger seat, slaps his pants off his shoulder and down into his lap with his bat wedged in-between his legs. " _I talked you into it._ You could've said no at any point in time – just admit you had as much fun as I did in there.” 

Derek glares out onto the street as they leave the neighborhood, spilling out onto a main road, clicking his blinker on with a sigh through his nose. 

Maybe he did. Adrenaline is coursing through his veins in a way that usually only happens after a big pack fight, a feeling that he's associated with pain and anger and flesh ripping underneath his claws. It's possibly...nice to be able to have it with something else, with _someone_ else; to sit in his car with Stiles as he laughs and talks about how awesome it was, Derek's fingers shaking on the steering wheel while he considers how close he came to almost being completely fucked over. 

It's not routine – far from it. 

Stiles isn't, either.

\----

“Macaroni and cheese?” Lydia repeats it with a wrinkle of her nose, hovering over the premade food section in the grocery store, arms crossed over her chest. She has a tendency of looking out of place in public settings, like this – anyplace normal, and she sticks out like a sore thumb. She walks around in vintage Chanel clothes, six inch heels no matter the occasion, expensive sunglasses perched up on her head, getting wistful looks from forty year old mothers with ten year olds at their sides screaming about cereal.

Derek is more or less used to the staring, at this point, ignores everyone in favor of reaching down to grab a container of the pasta. “Everyone likes it,” he says with a shrug. 

Lydia frowns even more deeply. 

Once a month on a Saturday in the summer time, the pack has a picnic out by the preserve, under a specific tree that blossoms with white fragrant flowers in the spring and leaves a bed of the petals underneath it that Lydia appreciates for whatever reasons she has. Typically, one person is put in charge of the food and snacks to bring along, and then everyone else just shows up and eats their hearts out before someone starts a wrestling match and they're all fighting each other in the middle of the clearing. It's probably Derek and everyone else's favorite day of the month.

The problem is, last time Lydia was put in charge of bringing the food, she showed up with caviar and weird tiny pickles, sandwich bread with bizarre nuts scattered throughout, and meats no one's ever heard of before. Since then, she's never been allowed to handle the provisions all on her own, and Derek's been assigned the task of making sure she doesn't try and refine the palettes of her pack all over again. 

“Soda, too,” Derek says after dropping the macaroni down into the basket Lydia has draped over her arm. “Most people like Sprite.” 

Lydia sighs, pinches her lips together, but starts off towards the soda aisle without another word. 

Or, at least, not another word about the food they're getting. 

As soon as they're deep in the aisle, she makes a big show out of looking over all the bottles and boxes of cans, scrunching her eyebrows together in mock thought, before she says, “so how's it going with that spark of yours?” 

Derek rubs his palm across his forehead. He's been waiting for this conversation. “He's not _my_ spark.” 

“Oh, right,” Lydia clucks her tongue and hefts a box of Sprite off the shelf, dropping it down into Derek's arms hard. “He's just your friend.” 

“Exactly.”

“Do we ever get to meet this _friend_?” She continues, clicking down the aisle with a frown. “Or are you keeping him all to yourself.” 

“Scott's met him,” Derek hedges sullenly, feeling like he's being harangued by his own mother instead of one of his best friends. “Hasn't he said anything about him?” 

Lydia hmm's as she approaches the dairy section, eyeballing the yogurts with moderate interest. “All he said was that the spark gives him the creeps _in a good way_ ,” she puts on a doofy voice to imitate Scott, and Derek rolls his eyes. “Not much to go on, there.” 

“What else is there to know?” He adjusts the cold box of cans in his arms, watching Lydia dump yogurt after yogurt into her basket, wondering who the Hell she thinks is going to be eating all of those. “He's just – Stiles.” Everything about Stiles is way too much to boil down into a sentence or less – way too much to even fit into an entire paragraph. How does he even begin to explain the ridiculous baseball bat, the purple spark, the fact that he apparently can get from miles upon miles away to his destination without using a car? 

From the look on Lydia's face as she starts walking off down another aisle, he can sense that saying _he's just Stiles_ isn't going to cover it. 

So he sighs, glaring down at the green box in his hands, and says, “Cora and Laura say they're scared of him.” 

Lydia hisses out a laugh, rolling her eyes. “Sparks are that way.” 

“Yeah – but -” he pauses, chooses his words carefully. “They think he's kind of...different.” 

“Different how?” 

They pause in the bread aisle, and Lydia is eyeing up a pumpernickel – Derek leans forwards and dumps a loaf of plain white into the basket before she gets any funny ideas, much to her chagrin. “He – he carries a baseball bat around?” 

Lydia pauses for a moment, turns on Derek and gives him a flat look. 

“He doesn't explain much to me,” he offers with a shrug, avoiding Lydia's calculating eyes. “He just told me – there's only so much magic that can fit in one person. As if he keeps a reserve of his spark inside a bat?” 

Derek would recognize the look that Lydia gets on his face almost anywhere. She's probably one of the most well read people he's ever met in his life, would know exponentially more about sparks than Derek could even begin to imagine, and the look she gets on her face is that of realization. Locks clicking into place, gears turning in her head, lips puffed up in thought. Instead of giving him any kind of explanation for what's going through her mind, she just drops her voice low and says, “that sounds dangerous, Derek.” 

_Dangerous_. There's that word again, the same that Laura and Cora used when they met Stiles. As if he's a risk, or something that's going to explode, a gas can just waiting for someone to drop a match on top of. 

“He's not,” he says defensively. “He's really not.” 

And Lydia doesn't look like she believes him. Not at all. “Stiles,” she repeats the name, cocking her head to the side. “Is that...”

“Stilinski.” 

Her eyes flicker with recognition; apparently everyone but him knows who the Sheriff's kid is. 

“He's – nothing about him is _dangerous_ , but...” he trails of and cradles the box of cans closer to himself, shaking his head as he remembers the claw marks and bruising from the last time he saw the spark. “...I think he's got magic-suckers on his trail.” 

“Oh,” Lydia shrugs her shoulders and doesn't look impressed. “Those aren't a problem for you – annoying, yes, but. Not much to get worked up about. For you.” 

Derek could kill one of those things easy and quick. They can't suck anything out of him, and they barely have more physical strength than a human. 

For Stiles...well. It wouldn't be hard for one of them to catch him off guard, at just the right moment, leech his spark clean out of him, leave him dead on the side of the road. Not hard at all. 

Just as they're about to start walking off to the cash registers to check out, he hears an almost horrifyingly familiar voice call out his name from the end of the aisle. 

Derek freezes right where he's standing, clutching onto the box of soda cans for dear life like they can give him any help or relief now, even though it's clearly too god damn late. He makes desperate eye contact with Lydia, who's staring down the aisle with a death glare in the direction from which the voice came, and starts thinking about seriously scaling up the shelves of bread, leaping into the next aisle, making a run for it right then and there. 

Running would be his only defense. As it is, he's paralyzed from the waist down, only has enough control of his body to slowly turn and face his ultimate demise. 

Walking towards him in high heeled boots and a leather jacket, a fancy purse clutched into her hands, is Kate Argent. 

Derek knows Kate inside and out, knows the contours of her body, the shape of it, the way she walks, the sound of her voice, all of it – eight years worth of memories of these things are all filed away into his brain, locked there forever. People you know for a long time get that way; it can be years since you've last seen them and you can recall the most insignificant details about them. Derek knows what she looks like, knows how she looks in this specific grocery store, in this specific aisle even, from all their shared shopping trips together. 

But this. This is like something out of a horror film. Kate and Derek's relationship was always more like a bad romance than it ever truly was horrific, no matter how it all ended up when everything was said and done. So this feeling? This creeping feeling of genuine terror at the sight of her walking towards him with a pinched smile on her face? 

Not something he's particularly used to.

She approaches them both warily, a stance that suggests she knows she's unwelcome and intruding. It reminds him a lot of the way she stands at the gun range, actually, all taut and wired up tight as though she's about to strike like a cobra at the slightest hint of a threat. “Hi, stranger,” she says, moving her eyes to Lydia with a more terse smile than she offers up to Derek. “Long time no see.” 

Oh, if Derek had any use whatso-fuckin-ever of his vocal chords, he'd be shooting out a _yeah, there's a fucking reason for that_ faster than Kate could even blink. 

Stiles would say something like that, if he were here, Derek thinks. Which - Jesus Christ. He should not be thinking about _Stiles_ right now. 

But he's cornered in the god damn grocery store like a caged animal, his alpha on high alert like she's about to claw someone's face off, so he decides, for the best, to go down a different road. 

“Yeah,” he agrees in a rasp, before clearing his throat and looking away from Kate's piercing eyes. “Long time.” 

Silence. Derek thinking about dropping the soda directly on her feet and making a break for it. 

“And Lydia,” Kate begins, voice so clipped she might as well be saying _fuck you_ , “you're looking put together.”

_Put together_. Maybe Derek isn't quite as versed in the passive aggression that females tend to engage in as he is in the physical kind, but he knows when to recognize a subtle slight as well as anyone else does. Implications of things that Kate has said to Derek in private about Lydia are hanging in the air, things like she's a vapid vain bitch and knows the frame of her mirror better than she knows anything else. 

Lydia straightens herself up and offers a prim, “you, as well,” in return. 

Kate's eyes turn back onto Derek as soon as the interaction is over and done with, like she's ripped the band-aid off and can now focus on poking at what's left of the wound. “How've you been, then? Same old same?” 

“I've been fine,” he says, because there's no way to box seven months of absolute heartbreak and misery down into one sentence, and Kate doesn't want to hear it anyway. She wants to hear _I've been fine_. Nothing less and nothing more. The time for the two of them to share their lives with each other is long gone, now, and poking at the remnants of that would be too much, way too much. 

“Good,” she says with a terse nod. Her face shutters for a second as she glances away, scanning her eyes along the rows of rolls and loaves of bread with a frown. “Actually you're catching me at a bit of an odd time. Something kind of bizarre happened to me the other night, and I'm still dealing with it.” 

Fuck. Derek's mind goes on a very long line of _fuck_. Just _fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck_ coupled with the thought of grabbing Lydia by the wrist and trying to force the alpha away from this conversation before the truth comes out. 

There's really only one thing Kate could be referring to. And nobody would know better than Derek, except possibly Stiles, exactly what odd thing she's about to explain in detail to him. 

“Oh?” He says, because it's the only sound he can make. 

“Yeah,” the word is drawn out, followed by a short laugh and a scratch at her eyebrow. “Someone sort of broke into my house -” oh fuck, “and destroyed nearly all of my clothes?” God dammit motherfucker holy shit god damn - 

“Wow,” Lydia intones, “now who would want to do a thing like that?” 

Kate's eyes swivel, and Derek can read her like a magazine – _you, for starters._

But not Derek. That's the thing. Derek would _never_. Fuck. 

“Some of my jewelry as well. You know the interesting thing is that nothing was stolen,” she scratches her eyebrow again, her classic confused move, and shakes her head. “The police say it looks like someone just breaking in to have a little bit of fun.” 

Fun. Stiles' word, not his, and now Kate's. “That's – wow,” Derek says, shaking his head. “Wow.” 

“I know, right?” Kate nods her head and laughs, because what else is there to do but laugh at this point. “I'm here now to see if I can't find a better lock for my door.” 

“Wouldn't a locksmith be better than Wal-Mart?” Lydia's tone is icy, chilly to the very core, and Derek feels like pinching her in the arm. Some things Lydia just never gets over; she can hold a grudge for years and years if you give her enough reason to, has issues with certain packs that date back to high school - and Kate has given her about two million reasons to never, ever like her again, to never offer her even the slightest sincere pleasantry. 

"Maybe,” Kate says back, narrowing her eyes. “But I better get going, and you two look busy,” she makes eye contact with Derek one last time, and he can't help but think that she hasn't touched him, not once during this whole interaction, and how weird it is for them to talk without touching. Without even a hug or a kiss on the cheek, no matter how weird it would be now. 

“Yeah, um – good luck with your...clothes.” 

She smiles at him, says _see you around_ , and then clacks down the aisle, out of sight – but far from out of mind. 

Derek is expecting it. When he gets out to the car, after loading all the groceries into the back and slamming the hatch shut, rounds to the passenger seat and climbs in. He expects Lydia to have her body turned towards his seat already, sunglasses off her head, eyes wild and annoyed. 

He climbs into his seat and buckles his seatbelt, staring pointedly down at his lap. He feels Lydia's eyes on him the entire time, glaring through his skin to get inside his brain, see straight clear to the truth. He frowns out the windshield and into the sunlight, refuses to make eye contact. 

“Derek,” she starts, voice muted like any second she's about to blow.

“Yeah?”

He hears her fingernail tapping on the steering wheel. “Why do I get the feeling...” oh, God... “...that _you_ had something to do with -”

“It wasn't me,” he blurts out, but even he can feel his heart stutter. Lydia throws her hands up in the air, shakes her head back and forth like she just cannot fucking believe it. 

“Did you _seriously_ break into Kate Argent's house and _destroy_ all her clothes?” 

“I -” he starts, but really there's nothing to say. There's no way to talk his way out of this one. “Look – it was – and Stiles said -”

“ _Stiles_!” She laughs without humor. “So we're blaming it on _Stiles_!” 

“No one's blaming anyone!” He scrubs his hands down his face, once, twice, while breathing steadily in and out. “Fucking – here's what happened. Okay? Stiles kept saying that I should exact some revenge plot against Kate and he has a _way_ of getting people to _do_ things -”

“Like _hypnotism_?” 

“No!” A beat. “At least, I don't think -”

“Oh, for fuck's sake...”

“We just went in there and – tore all her...clothes...up?” The words come out slowly, because hearing them out loud – hearing himself say it – it's just so fucking ridiculous to him. He imagines that if he were to tell the entire story from beginning to end, starting with Stiles asking about his secret wolf kinks and ending with the two of them leaping off a second story balcony, it would be even more ridiculous to hear out loud. Especially the part where Derek literally jacked Stiles off on Kate's bed and she has no fucking idea; no one else besides Derek and Stiles will ever have any fucking idea about that part, so long as he can help it. 

“And you're saying Stiles the spark commandeered this entire thing,” she hisses in an accusatory tone of voice. “Stiles dragged you by _force_ to Kate Argent's house -”

“Well...”

“... _forced_ you to break in with him...”

“...well...”

“...and then _forced_ you to tear her clothes up?” 

He looks down at his lap, plays absentmindedly with one of the creases in his pant leg. “He didn't _force_ me.” 

“So this is what I get to look forward to now,” she says, jamming her keys into the ignition with a huff and starting the engine. “You and that spark going off on illegal adventures just for the kick of it.” 

There's a few seconds of silence where Derek can't do much else except for glare pointedly downwards, wondering how the Hell he got himself into this fucked up situation, because now apparently _police_ are involved, based on what Kate said inside the store, and then - 

...Lydia starts laughing. With her foot on the brake pedal, hand hovering over the transmission, she starts laughing. 

“What?” Derek demands, anxious and annoyed at the same time. 

“It's just -” she shakes her head, starts laughing even harder. “It's just that -” 

“ _What_?” 

“She literally -” she's wiping tears out of her eyes, now, hunched over the steering wheel, gasping for breath, “has no idea -”

And she's right about that, at least. Kate would never in a million years dream of Derek doing something like that. It hasn't even occurred to her, even though the only person in this entire town who could really be considered her straight up enemy, Lydia and the rest of the pack aside, is Derek Hale himself. Yet it just – it hasn't even crossed her mind. Derek stood there in the grocery store with her and had the entire story told to him, she looked him in his eyes, and not a flicker of suspicion crossed her face.

Because Derek wouldn't. Or, at least, the Derek she knew wouldn't. The Derek that always waited around for her to come home no matter how late she went out, the Derek that willfully ignored the scent of other men on her skin and pretended like there was some other explanation – that Derek would've never done what he did. 

But that's just not him anymore, he doesn't think. If Derek tried to act that way, now, like a doormat, he suspects very strongly that Stiles would smack him in the back of the head and tell him to have a higher sense of self worth. And then he'd probably smash someone's window in with his bat, just because he could. 

“So -” Lydia starts, sniffling around the last remaining giggles, “that's what you and your spark do together? Petty crimes?” 

Derek doesn't correct her when she says _your spark_ , this time. 

He makes Lydia swear not to tell the rest of the pack about Derek and Stiles breaking into Kate's house before they get to the picnic, makes her promise not to even _mention_ the spark to the rest of his friends because he doesn't feel like dealing with the Spanish Inquisition today – especially not after encountering Kate Argent. That's enough emotional turmoil and heart-stopping horror for one day, he suspects. 

Lydia promises on both counts, but it doesn't matter either way. 

The second all the food is laid out and everyone's chewing, a silence falls on the group. Isaac keeps avoiding eye contact with Derek and staring at the sandwich in his hands, Scott is staring directly at Derek's face like he's trying to decipher a bomb code, and Kira looks like she's shoving food in her mouth just so she doesn't wind up blurting something out or asking any questions. Lydia, for her part, is sitting primly with her legs tucked underneath herself, building her sandwich and smirking to herself. 

After another fifteen seconds of this, Derek throws his sandwich down onto his paper plate, and says, “okay. Just let it out.” 

“It's not fair,” Scott blurts out pretty much as soon as Derek's done talking, crunching on a potato chip and narrowing his eyes at his packmate. “...that you're, like, hiding him from us!” 

“I'm not hiding him -”

“You could've invited him today, you know,” Scott interrupts glumly, picking along the crust of his otherwise untouched sandwich. “I don't get why you're so secretive about the whole thing.” 

“At least you've met him,” Kira pipes up, finally swallowing the mound of sandwich she had rolling around in her mouth. “I barely know what he looks like.”

“I think I've seen him at the Sheriff's station a couple of times,” Isaac lifts his eyes and squints, like he's thinking. “He's kind of – spooky.” 

Derek pinches the bridge of his nose, wants to get up and start running away as fast as possible from this situation. 

“Oh, I know,” Scott nods his head with a smirk, “I shook his hand, man. I know he's fucking creepy as all Hell – it's _neat_.” 

Neat. He makes eye contact with Lydia, who's nibbling on her sandwich and smirking to herself, still. Absolutely no help in that department. 

“We just want to know when you're going to start bringing him around,” Kira says in a light voice, shrugging her shoulders like it's no big deal – but Derek knows better. She's trying for casual. And Kira's not exactly the most _casual_ person on the face of the planet. “...a spark is a pretty serious thing, you know.”

If Derek and Stiles were serious, then yes, a spark would be a pretty serious thing. If Derek were engaging in a serious, committed relationship with Stiles the spark, then of course he would've been bringing him around to meet his pack by now, of course he would have. A spark is an addition to packs that makes the entire group as a whole stronger, better, more well respected. If Derek had any plans to mate with Stiles, then he'd be coming into the pack either way.

But that – that's just not the kind of relationship Stiles and Derek have. At the moment. 

“We're just friends,” he addresses the pack at large, and Kira frowns. “It's not as though we're – official or anything. It's just, I don't know. Fun?” 

“Fun.” Scott repeats the word like it's idiotic or gross. 

Derek gets the sense that he's not getting through to any of them – decides to go down a different route altogether. “Look – if you guys want to meet him so badly...” they all nod in unison, and Lydia smirks again, “...he runs a booth at the farmer's market in the Zen Den so -”

“The Zen Den?” Isaac looks horrified. “ _That's_ where your spark works?” 

Like Derek has said. Wolves really don't care for that section of the market. “Yes. He sells magic cupcakes.” The group looks unimpressed and disgusted, which is more or less the exact reaction he was going for. “You guys can go down there at any time and make his acquaintance, eat a cupcake, what have you.” 

None of them look particularly thrilled about the idea; so Derek's played his cards exactly right. It's not that he doesn't want his pack to meet Stiles, or that he's trying to hide the spark from them it's just that he – well. 

Werewolf packs tend to be very all for one and one for all, sharing is caring, puppy piles, and all that. It's something that can be either the best thing ever, comforting like family and like home, or alternatively, fucking annoying. Derek is more or less used to it after an entire life as a werewolf, sharing his clothing and his food and his living space with both his family and his new pack of friends, but sometimes it really feels like he can't just having something all for himself, that's just _his_. 

And maybe he wants that out of Stiles. A part of him knows it's too much to want, too much to ask for, really, considering the nature of their relationship that he himself agreed to – there's nothing about Stiles that _belongs_ to anyone, least of all Derek. But there's just this part of him that bristles at the thought of any of his friends getting to know Stiles any better than Derek does, getting to see Stiles pull that purple spark out of himself. 

It's selfish, and probably unhealthy. Probably not the best idea to entertain thoughts like that. 

Either way, the pack doesn't end up having to go seek out Stiles at the farmer's market. Derek doesn't get to keep his secrets to himself for very long, at all, and it's just typical that something would happen to throw a wrench in his plan to keep the pack far, far away from the spark before they, too, can judge him as creepy and spooky and _different_. 

Since Stiles apparently can't just do anything the way normal people do, the way the entire pack meets Stiles is fantastical and over the top, the worst possible situation for him to show up at. 

Like Derek has said. Lydia has a bit of a problem with not pissing off the alphas of other packs. She doesn't care much for false pleasantries or pretending to be nice to someone just to keep pack relations smooth and glossy instead of rocky and tumultuous. She always says _I'm not going to be fake, Derek_ and sometimes Derek just wants to grab her by the shoulders and remind her that being fake is sometimes part of the whole leadership bit. 

Everybody has their flaws. Lydia, with perfect looks and a near perfect IQ and perfect house - her flaws are more characteristic. 

Lydia pisses the wrong people off, and gets the whole pack into trouble because of it. Derek and the rest of the betas more or less accept this with eye rolls, get into tussles with people they do not fucking care about. It's not bad, he guesses. Good pack building exercise, maybe. Usually after one of these pack battles they all go back to someone's house and gorge themselves on four different kinds of take out, sometimes still bloody and sweaty and dirty, celebrating yet another victory. 

Unfortunately, this time isn't looking at all like that. 

Lydia had taken off separately in her own car to go home a little bit earlier than the rest of the pack, citing something about an _important phone call_. 

Scott had waited until her car was vanishing down the dirt road and into the woods to turn to the rest of the pack with his eyebrows raised. “Important phone call,” he had said, rolling his eyes. “Code for fighting with Jackson for six hours over Skype.” 

Probably literally. 

Her and Jackon's break-up was almost as earth-shattering as Derek and Kate's - the difference was she refused to allow anyone to treat her like a sad kitten, surged forwards without even so much as ever even crying in front of someone else. It probably wasn't the healthiest way to deal with it. Now they just fight cross-continentally. Constantly. 

Either way, she left, and the rest of them stayed for maybe another hour before packing up into Scott's shitty car – Derek and Isaac in the back and Kira in the passenger seat – and decided, stupidly, that they wanted ice cream. It's amazing to Derek, truly amazing, that ninety-nine percent of the time, when they unwittingly get themselves into trouble, they're always doing something as inane as getting hot fudge sundaes. One time Isaac wanted to go look at the puppies a breeder was selling in the Wal Mart parking lot, and Derek somehow managed to walk away from that with a gigantic hunk of flesh missing from his neck from the zombies that appeared out of literal fucking nowhere. Because apparently zombies lurk around in the back of Wal Mart waiting for puppies to show up for them to eat. 

So, that's what they were doing. Derek was perched on the hood of Scott's car, spooning up a glob of ice cream and listening to Kira and Isaac get into their ten thousandth argument about that television show they're always binge watching together on Netflix, Scott next to him, when he noticed a pretty large pack of werewolves stalking towards them. With intent. 

Derek swallowed his ice cream, nudged Scott in the side. Kira and Isaac stopped arguing, angled their bodies around to stare at the pack as they edged closer and closer to Scott's parked car. It's not like Derek needed one of them to pipe up and say _we're here to beat your fucking asses_ , because the message was translated pretty loud and clear from the way half of them were already wolfed out, glaring at the smaller pack with glowing eyes. 

“Oh, for fuck's sake,” Scott groaned, glancing down into his half finished ice cream with a frown. “I'm not done with my ice cream yet.” 

Derek dropped his cup down onto the hood of the car, raised himself into a standing position, and made direct eye contact with the alpha of the pack as he came within ten feet of where he and his pack were all standing in a line, now. 

“Your know-it-all alpha isn't around tonight, huh?” He said, scratching casually at his face with a smirk. Jesus, Derek didn't even _recognize_ this guy or any of the members of his pack, and here he fucking was about to get into a _fight_ with them. “That's a real shame. You see, we were kind of hoping -”

“Can we skip the speech part of this,” Isaac interrupted in his casual drawl, and the alpha's eyes swiveled to him with an annoyed flash. “And just get right to it? My ice cream's melting.” 

Derek raised his eyes to the sky and asked whatever gods there may be how he wound up with an entire pack of egotistical big mouths that can't see the fact that they're outnumbered four to six without a fucking alpha. Derek was thinking about going down the road of _why don't you wait until she is around_ , slyly get themselves out of a fight to the death in the Dairy Queen parking lot. 

But no. No. Too late for that. 

Normally their pack fights start with Lydia being the first to claw at someone's face, the first to throw the punch or take one of her heels off to jab someone directly in the eye with the pointy end; but seeing as how she wasn't here this time...

Isaac got punched in the face, Kira punched the other beta right back, and that's how they got to where they are now. Derek roped into yet another pack war without even fucking knowing why or what it was that Lydia did to them to piss them off this much. Getting kicked in the shin for no _god damn_ reason, fending off two other betas at once for _no reason_ , and it doesn't take very long, not at all, for him to realize that...

….they're probably not going to win this one. 

No alpha. Outnumbered. No weapons, no upperhand, nothing. Isaac an okay fighter, all things considered, and Kira's even better, but Scott is sloppy. He's always been sloppy, no matter how many times Derek has tried to teach him how to use his speed instead of his strength because he's better at it, he still insists on throwing too much into his punches and wearing himself out halfway through the fight. Derek's just the opposite; all strength, and no speed whatsoever, especially not fast for a werewolf. 

It just so happens that this particular pack is proficient in both. Derek's getting his ass handed to him, thrown backwards onto the hood of Scott's car and destroying the windshield. Kira is cornered back against the side of the Dairy Queen with blood dripping down the side of her head, a chunk of hair missing out of her scalp. He doesn't even know where Isaac is, can't see him anywhere – and Scott is climbing up on top of his car in a clear attempt to get away from the fighting for ten seconds so he can try to heal what looks like a gnarly stomach wound, blood leaking through his fingers where he's probably trying to hold his internal fucking organs in. 

He's already mapping out his surrender speech. He might just be the only one of the pack who actually has the humility to admit defeat when it's staring them all in the face – if Lydia were here, she'd sooner die most likely than ever waving that white flag. But, if Lydia were here, then they wouldn't be fucking losing this badly. 

The alpha is stalking forwards towards the car, hand outstretched to grab Derek and heft him off the hood of the car, toss him somewhere else or try to claw his throat out, Derek is holding his hand out in his direction in the beginnings of a surrender, and then - 

Familiar long fingers are wrapping around the alpha's upper arm, stopping him in place. 

Stiles raises his eyebrows, cocking his head to the side as he leers directly into the wolf's face. “Hi,” he says. The alpha's eyes are comically large, and what's even more comical is how the two look standing next to each other. An alpha werewolf, a huge hulking dude who weighs over two hundred pounds easily, and a skinny twenty-one year old who can't weigh more than a hundred and fifty pounds. And the werewolf is the one who's scared. 

Not without good reason. For the first time since Derek's met him, he gets to see exactly what it is that baseball bat he's always carrying around is good for. 

One second Stiles is leaning back, putting a good two feet in between him and the werewolf, rolling his shoulders. Kira is still trying to fight off the beta that's cornered her, calling out for back up, Scott is kicking at another two that are trying to grab at him from down on the ground – everything's still moving, like the only two people who are aware there's a fucking spark standing right there are the alpha and Derek. 

The next – Stiles cocks his bat, jostling it in the air a couple of times like he's literally standing on a dirt mound on a field, waiting for the pitch to come, and then he swings. 

People sort of notice he's there, after that. It's hard not to. 

One fucking swing from that ridiculous metal bat, and a _crack_ like thunder echoes so loudly in the parking lot that a couple of the werewolves actually grunt from the strain it puts on their eardrums, and the alpha goes flying through the air, landing with a boom into the side of an SUV. The car alarm begins to blare, off and on, off and on, and the entire parking lot just...stops. 

The betas from the other pack stop, and Isaac sticks his head out from underneath the car, and Scott freezes in place. Derek can't do much else himself except for stare, mouth agape, at the spark standing there, staring after the werewolf he just obliterated with a small smile on his face. Like he's pleased. 

“Spark,” one of the betas says in a low voice, and then, again, louder, like a warning, “ _spark_!” 

Stiles casts his eyes away from the alpha who's slowly crawling out from the hole he's made in the car, still shrieking its alarm, focuses on the beta closest to him with a blank expression on his face. It's the one that's got Kira pinned, a big guy with his claws poised against her throat, ready to rip flesh at a moment's notice. He points one long finger in his direction, raises his eyebrows, and says, “are you sure about that?” 

He jostles the bat in his hand, adjusts his grip on the handle like he's getting ready to wield it again, and that does it. 

The beta drops his hand off of Kira's neck supernaturally fast, makes a break for it. Just flat out _runs away_ , leaving the thick scent of terror in his wake as he books it across the parking lot towards the main road. Stiles purses his lips as he watches this, like he's disappointed that he doesn't get to beat on someone else, and then flicks his eyes threateningly on the betas crowding around the car, around Scott and Derek. 

They run, too. One of them grabs his buddy by the arm and takes off like a shot, hissing out a _when the fuck did the Martin pack get a spark_ before vanishing behind the rows of cars. 

Stiles huffs out a breath, drops the tip of his bat down on the ground to lean his body on top of it, putting his free hand on his hip and sighing. “Men always leave me,” he groans, shaking his head side to side. 

The energy in the air left behind in the wake of all this is enough to leave Derek starstruck on the hood of the car, not even blinking for fear of missing even one second of it. Kira stays pressed back against the walls of the Dairy Queen, and when Derek chances a glance in the direction of the restaurant, he catches sight of a good handful of humans standing at the window, jaws dropped as they stare at the spark standing there. 

It's unbelievable. It really, really is. As many stories as Derek has heard about sparks before, how powerful they are...he's never seen it like that. Right in front of his fucking face, he watched a gangly kid wearing a hoodie with the hood pulled up render an entire pack of werewolves terrified, sent them fleeing with little more than threatening glances and a single swing of a baseball bat. 

“ _Pack wars_?” Stiles approaches him, the bat dangling from his fingers, a smile on his face as he takes stock of all the blood and shattered glass. “Now, isn't that just so West Side Story?” 

As he approaches, he hears Scott move backwards on top of the car. When Derek glances up, he finds the beta holding his bloody hands out, eyes wide in what could easily be classified as terror. 

Stiles must be used to this reaction. He hardly pays it any mind, even as Isaac clambers out from underneath the car and takes several steps back himself, in spite of the fact that his arm is almost completely dislocated out of its socket. The spark looks only at Derek, looks at the scratch marks on his body, the blood, and frowns. “You guys in the habit of taking on other packs without an alpha?” 

Derek coughs. “I – they just showed up.” It's as good an explanation as he can formulate, his mind is spinning so fast. 

Stiles hmm's, ignores the way Kira is cautiously approaching the rest of the group with huge eyes. “Good thing I had a hankering for some cheese curds.” 

Damn good thing, actually. If it weren't for Stiles, Derek would've either had to surrender in shame, or accept death. Stiles looks like he knows this, but isn't going to bring it up, ask for any kind of thanks. He just drapes his baseball bat over the back of his shoulders, across his neck, like he always does, squints up at the lights in the parking lot. 

Behind them, a red haired woman is coming out from the Dairy Queen with her jaw dropped, approaching the SUV and shaking her head. Stiles turns around, pops his eyes open huge, and immediately starts stalking in the opposite direction. “Whoops,” he says, pulling his hood up tighter around his face and flashing Derek a huge smile, “if the cops show up, I wasn't here.” 

With that final word, nothing else, he's vanishing into the shadows beyond the Dairy Queen. Gone. Just like that. 

It's silent in the parking lot for a few seconds, save for the redheaded woman walking in circles around what is presumably her destroyed car, talking on the phone. When sirens start up a good mile or two away, Derek knows someone's already called the police. Everyone's seen them – the pack just sits there, waiting, no use in running. It's not like they've necessarily done anything wrong, exactly. It's definitely frowned upon for werewolves to get into huge fights in public places, but the destruction to public (or, in this case, personal) property was all Stiles. 

The rest of the other pack isn't here to try and press charges on them, so they just stand there. Derek slides himself off the hood of the car, cracking his neck, feeling the claw slashes across his face and throat healing themselves up nicely. 

“Holy. Shit.” Scott's voice. He drops into a sitting position on top of his own car, laughs almost hysterically. “That was -” 

“Yeah,” Isaac agrees, blue eyes wide. Derek's going to have to help him get his arm back into place in a second here. “So that's – that's...”

“That's your spark?” Kira asks him, voice tentative. 

Derek glares out at the place where Stiles had vanished, off into the trees, and nods his head. “Yeah. That's him.” 

When the police show up, Derek identifies Stiles' father pretty much instantaneously. Firstly, he's got the Sheriff's badge clipped onto his brown uniform shirt, and secondly, he reeks of Stiles. Like he's been in the same vicinity with him at some point during the day – which makes sense. 

The man spends a minute talking to the redheaded woman, rubbing at his face as he glares down at the huge hole in the SUV, irreparable, really, and then flicks his eyes over to where Derek and his pack are all standing there. Their clothes are bloodied, torn, but their wounds are all healed up for the most part. They had pinned Isaac down against the hood of the car and slammed his arm back into its socket right before the sirens and lights pulled into the parking lot. 

He sighs through his nose as he looks at them, and then, with two fingers, waves them over. 

The pack approaches warily. Derek's history with law enforcement is a little bit...colorful. Most werewolves have been in this exact position before, getting glared at by a couple of uniforms and having to explain the situation with flashing blue and red lights crossing over their faces. He's never been taken in, thank God, but he has had to explain a lot of situations away with some heavy handed half truths and some flat out lies. Normally, Lydia is here to handle this part of it. 

But, again. Not here. 

The Sheriff points to the SUV with one finger, raises his eyebrows as he looks each member of the pack in the eye individually for a moment at a time. “You guys know anything about this?” 

“Um -” Scott begins eloquently. Derek closes his eyes, palms his face. 

“It wasn't them,” the redhead pipes up. “It was an alpha – and a – a spark.” 

At that, the Sheriff raises his head and blinks a couple of times. “A spark,” he repeats. “A spark put a hole in your car.” 

“He sent the alpha flying through the air,” she uses her hand to illustrate this, swooping it like it's an airplane. 

“Flying through the air.” 

“Yes,” she affirms. “I saw it – I saw him.” 

Derek suddenly feels like he's going to have to lie this time, as well. He covers his face with his palms again, shakes his head in disbelief. He should've ran when he had the chance. 

“Okay,” the Sheriff says slowly, rubbing at his face. A green eyed deputy behind him is examining the damage to the car, shaking his head like he can't believe it either. “What did he look like?” 

She squints her eyes, and then shrugs. “He had a hood on, I couldn't see his face, um...tall?” 

“Was he Caucasian, African American...” 

“I don't know – I couldn't see his face at all.” 

The Sheriff fixes his eyes on the pack, raising his eyebrows. Implications obvious – _what about you?_

There's a couple seconds of dead air, and then – in unison – _didn't see him, never seen him before in my life, you know it was really dark out here I couldn't quite make out..._

Derek is the only one who remains silent during this, and the Sheriff notices. He fixes his eyes on the beta werewolf, and Derek can't help but think that that's definitely where Stiles gets his calculating stares from. Even though the Sheriff is little more than a human, it's clear that he knows how to give an intimidating stare when he has to. 

The wolf swallows. “Well – like she said, his hood was up, so...”

Something in the Sheriff's face tells Derek that he doesn't believe it. Not a word of it. He turns around and stares at the hole in the car – and it really is truly spectacular. It looks like another car slammed into the side of it, its innards exposed, gas and other fluids leaking out of it, the thing looking seconds away from collapsing in on itself. And then he turns back to Derek, specifically, his lips a firm line. “You know,” he rubs a hand over his jaw, “this isn't the first complaint we've gotten about a spark causing problems.” 

Derek doesn't know if he's supposed to respond, so he doesn't. Just stands there feeling suddenly like he's about to be handcuffed and taken in for whatever reason.

“Few days ago there was a break-in down in Beacon Heights,” Derek schools his face into entire blankness, not letting anything cross it, not a tell, nothing. “...locks weren't broken, or anything. Just open. Like – magic. You know?” 

Derek does know. Oh, boy, does he fucking know. 

“It's interesting, actually,” he continues on with a short laugh that doesn't have a hint of any genuine humor in it, “that was Kate Argent's house.” Beside him, he feels Scott stiffen, like he's put two and two together himself – but Derek keeps still, aside from a raise of his eyebrows to indicate possible surprise or indignation. Nothing too strong and nothing too little. “If I recall correctly, you know Kate Argent pretty well. Right?” 

The wolf nods his head up and down. “She's my ex-wife.” 

“Right. Ex-wife. Ex-wife...” he scrubs at his face again, squinting past Derek's head. “And now I come here tonight, and you're here as well, in the wake of another spark incident...” he locks eyes with Derek, shrugs his shoulders. “Coincidence?” 

It's the only thing Derek can think to do. It's exactly what he should do. He shakes his head slowly side to side, face a complete mask of indifference, and says, “I've never seen that kid in my life before.”

\----

As soon as Derek's in his house, he's on the phone.

It rings, rings, rings, Derek pacing back and forth across his living room floor muttering _c'mon, c'mon_ , under his breath. His hair is standing up straight in the air from running his hand through it again and again, stressing the fuck out, and he feels like he's about to jump out of his skin at any second. 

When he hears the familiar crackle of energy on the other end of the phone, followed by Stiles' sleep-thick voice, he attacks. 

“Stiles,” he starts, spitting the name out harshly, “you've really put me in a dick of a situation, here -”

“What?” He sounds startled, if maybe a little sleep heavy, still. Derek is amazed, really and truly amazed, this while Derek has been absolutely losing his mind in actual unmitigated terror, Stiles has been asleep. 

“Remember when you just fucking vanished and left me and my pack to deal with -”

“I don't know if I appreciate that tone of voice,” there's a shuffling on the other end, something like sheets rustling, and he sounds more awake now. “If I remember correctly, I saved you and your pack's lives.” 

Derek squeezes his eyes shut. That's undeniable, he knows it is. If it weren't for Stiles – well. Derek doesn't really want to linger on that alternate reality too much, because the outcome would've not been great. “Yeah, all right? Yes. But that doesn't explain why you just _left_ -”

“My father is the Sheriff,” he says this like it's the end all, be all, the only explanation he would ever need to give. 

“Your father grilled me and my pack for ten fucking minutes about the _mysterious spark_ wreaking havoc over Beacon Hills, Stiles! And now I'm a part of it, too, do you _realize_ -”

“Did anyone mention a baseball bat?” 

Derek blinks, staggered at having been interrupted in what was shaping up to be a pretty good rant. “No...”

“Did anyone say anything about freckles?” 

Another pause. “No.”

“Purple eyes?”

“No.”

“Any defining characteristics whatsoever?” 

The only thing the redheaded woman could remember about him was tall and that he had a hood on. Which really narrows it down to, about, three dozen sparks in the tricounty area. “No...”

“Eh. He's got nothin'.” 

The blase' _whatever dude_ attitude, in stark contrast with Derek's own pounding heart and shaking hands, his pacing across the floor again and again in a ceaseless pattern, is really, really starting to piss him off. How everything with Stiles is just _nothing_ to him, something for him to breeze past and smirk at while shrugging his shoulders. “I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation here, Stiles,” on the other end of the phone, Stiles sighs, and that same white noise feedback accompanies it. “They're putting things together. They suspect that a spark broke into Kate's house, did you _know_ that?” 

“Yes, yes, _Jesus_ , of course I know that -”

“And your father was looking at me like he knew! He said _coincidence_!” 

“You need to calm down,” Stiles says on the other line, and Derek can imagine him rolling his eyes and scratching at his face with a frown. “Just trust me, all right? I've been dodging my dad and the entire department for years, dude.” 

Derek can't help but wonder exactly how much Stiles likes to get into trouble. The way he got into Kate Argent's house was not exactly the mark of a beginner, that's for sure; he magically picked that lock like he's done it a thousand times, strode inside without a care in the world. As soon as he thought the cops were going to show up in that parking lot, he strode away so casually, as if running from the cops is just what he's used to. It doesn't strike Derek as the type of thing the son of a Sheriff would be getting into, if he's being honest. 

“If I thought for even ten seconds they really had something on either me or you, then I'd be worried – but they just don't, man. My dad's, like, an expert at the _I know you've done something wrong_ look, trust me – he gives it to everyone. He doesn't know anything.” 

“He suspects,” Derek offers quietly, finally pausing in his pacing to lean back against his kitchen counter, dropping his forehead into his hand. Maybe some of Stiles' calm is leeching off onto him. 

“Sure. He suspects. I'm his fuck-up disappointment son, so yeah. He suspects me.” 

Derek is caught off guard by both the words and the tone of voice that Stiles uses as he says them. Stiles has never said much about his familial life, close to nothing about himself in general actually, so it's a surprise to hear him say something about it to begin with, but also to hear him say something so...negative. And he says it so offhand, like he's said or thought the same thing so many times that it almost means nothing to him anymore – just a fact that he recites like a memorized poem. 

The wolf doesn't know what to say in response to that. It makes him uncomfortable, frankly, so he switches gears. “I don't want to offend you -” Stiles snickers on the other line, before letting Derek continue, “...but aren't most sparks supposed to be – you know – good? Not troublemakers?” Baking pies and smiling genially and offering hugs to anyone who asks? 

Stiles full on laughs, now, the sound of it crackling harshly in Derek's ear. “Trust me on one thing, here, Derek. Any spark who you think is a _good_ one just hasn't been caught yet.”

\----

Stiles insisted that the police wouldn't be a problem, over and over again. And he turned out to be right, in the end – a week passed and no uniforms were knocking down his door, hauling him in, demanding that he pay for all the damages done to both Kate's clothing and jewelry and the SUV in the Dairy Queen parking lot. So he figured himself good and safe, for the time being.

At least until Stiles gets him into another mess all over again. 

A part of him has been thinking, lately, nudging him in his subconscious and trying to tell him that it might be best to cut off ties with the spark now, before things get any worse. He thinks about what his sisters and Lydia had to say about him, _dangerous_ and _frightening_ , about the way that Stiles won't be upfront about what it is about him that's so fucking eerie sometimes, how he can fight off an entire pack without even so much as blinking, how he says he's been dodging law enforcement. All of these things add up to _trouble_. 

Irrefutably, Stiles is trouble. He's bad news, front page in all black capital letters, and Derek would be foolish, really, to keep letting it go farther with him. He knows that, in some part of himself. He has to know it; for fuck's sake, it's so obvious. 

But then, there's another part of him. The louder part. The one that he's more prone to pay attention to, that reminds him of the way Stiles feels underneath Derek's hands, the way Stiles' voice sounds and his freckles, how the feel of his energy and power dances along the confines of Derek's skin – how the only fucking reason that Derek ever got out of his post-Kate funk was because Stiles came barreling into his life and woke him the fuck up. That's just something he can't overlook, can't forget about just because of a couple of warning flags going up.

Growing up, all he ever learned about was control. Control the shift, control the power of the full moon, control himself; and maybe that's the whole point of it. There's only so much self control a person has, right? There's only so much that he can handle at any one point, only so much he can devote into stopping himself. And in that vein, he guesses there are some things he just can't control. 

Stiles is obviously one of them. Another might be how he feels about him. He had the same problem with Kate, didn't he? 

So he tamps down the other voice, accepts Stiles' call when it comes in after a week of not seeing him, and feels something warm flutter around in his chest at the sound of the spark's voice on the other end of the phone no matter how hard he tries to ignore it. 

He sounds a little nervous, voice catching awkwardly on a couple of words as he says, “you didn't come to my booth at the farmer's market.” 

Derek sighs. He had avoided Stiles at the market this past week, yes; mostly because he didn't want his sisters giving him dirty looks for sneaking off to go meet with the spark they don't approve of, and he also didn't want his fucking mother catching wind of any of this that he has going on. But there was also just a little part of him that genuinely didn't know what he would say to Stiles, now, since the last conversation they had was a little emotionally charged. It felt strange, and he didn't know if Stiles wanted to see him either, so he just...didn't go. He could've. 

Hearing Stiles' voice on the other end of the phone, though, all he can think about is Stiles waiting around for Derek to show up, offer him a ride home again, only for Derek to never come around. It makes him feel guilty. 

“Yeah,” he says back, “I didn't think...you know.” 

Stiles sighs like he does know. “Well,” his voice is tentative on the other end – not something that Derek has ever known Stiles to be. “I was calling to ask if you wanted to come over to my place.” 

“ _Your_ place?” Derek repeats, eyebrows raising up into his hairline. Stiles has never once suggested that before, and the wolf has spent many a night lying in bed imagining exactly what kind of place Stiles would live in. His imagination sometimes went a little wild, but he thinks he's never been too far off from the reality of it. 

“Yeah,” Stiles says back. “I just -” a couple beats of silence, some heavy breathing. He sounds beyond nervous, though. He sounds anxious. Pent up. “...feeling a little lonely, I guess."

The small voice in the back of Derek's head with the _danger_ and the _scared_ and the _remember not to fuck with a spark_ gets overruled by the louder voice, and the magic, and the touch. 

“Okay,” Derek agrees. Maybe against his better judgment. 

_Definitely_ against his better judgment. His better judgment would've stopped him from ever calling Stiles in the first place, way back at the beginning of everything. There is such a thing as _too far in to go back now_ , he knows that. He's already well past that point. 

When he pulls up outside of the address that Stiles texted him, he frowns. This isn't exactly what he had in mind when he was imagining it, in all honesty. 

It's a small light blue thing, one story, with a whisper of a yard and a short porch, one step, cobble stone walkway. It looks painfully normal, not at all what Stiles looks like, so color him surprised. The place reeks of Stiles, though, the mailbox and the railing along the porch, so he knows beyond any doubt that he's found the right place, no matter how hard it is to reconcile the sight of it with what he's been imagining inside his own head. 

Right as he's pulling open the white screen door to knock on the wooden one waiting behind it, Stiles pulls open the door quickly, like he's been waiting anxiously for him to show up, and gives him a small smile. Making eye contact with him isn't nearly what it used to be; he's more or less used to the strange feeling he gets having those eyes stare directly into his, barely feels the creeping chill up his spine anymore. 

But there is something there, tonight. Something close to fear, verging along on anxiety and nerves and desperation. It's not a smell Derek is used to getting off of the spark, so he's slightly taken aback by it at first; wondering why he'd be so worried about inviting Derek over to his place. 

He pushes the door all the way open, stands back for Derek to walk inside. Once the wolf is inside, he takes a second to glare out the door, all around his front yard, the quiet neighborhood outside. As though he's making sure there's no one that's followed Derek, or followed Stiles, like he's afraid of being watched. Then, he quickly rears back inside and slams the door behind him, locking all four of the locks he has. 

The first thing he says as he huddles behind Derek, putting his hand gently on the wolf's shoulder, is, “try not to touch some of this stuff.” 

It's a good thing he said that, Derek thinks, glancing around himself with wide eyes, because he thinks he wouldn't have been able to help himself otherwise. It's not that the place is odd, and it's not exactly the bizarre funky eclectic stuff that he always figured it would be. There's just – weird stuff everywhere. A normal couch and a television with shelves of DVD's, books, and then there are piles of weird looking rocks and crystals, plants Derek's never seen before hanging from strings in front of the window. Bottles of weird looking goops, pouches of what looks like fucking fairy dust – the place smells like Stiles and magic, entirely, not another scent to be found throughout. 

“What happens if I touch some of it?” Derek asks, taking a single step forwards across the creaking hardwood. 

“Well,” Stiles smiles, points his finger at one of the plants dangling from the window – the blue vines with decaying red flowers. “That'll give you one hell of a rash.” 

Derek looks at the plant, frowns. “Christ.” 

“And some of those stones have,” he waves his hand around in the air, “properties.” 

“Properties.” 

“You don't want to know – Allison almost lost her hand from fucking around with the pink one.” 

That is a story that Derek just doesn't think he ever wants to hear. He does not want to hear about how certain kinds of pink stones can somehow remove people's _hands_. 

Stiles offers him tea, an offer he accepts, and when Stiles walks away to putter around in his kitchen, Derek takes a seat on the couch, looking around himself a bit more. There's a book sitting on the coffee table with _TRAPPING SPIRITS_ written across the front in yellow lettering, a bookmark sticking out halfway through. Masochistically, Derek clears his throat and calls, “is there – a ghost in here?” 

“What?” Stiles voice calls back – it sounds like he's laughing. When Derek looks up, he sees Stiles' head sticking out from around the doorframe leading to the kitchen – he notices the book that Derek's looking at and he smiles even wider. “It's just research.”

“Research,” Derek repeats as the spark vanishes back around the corner. Ghost research. Okay? 

Sitting in Stiles' living room, surrounded by bizarre things and waiting for the spark to come back has got to be one of the weirdest five minutes of his life. He swears to God he feels eyes watching him from the pile of rocks resting on one of the shelves of books; like definitely. He gets the same creeping feeling up his neck he gets whenever anyone stares at him for too long – when he turns around and eyeballs the pile, the turquoise stone sitting on top falls over of its own accord, vanishing behind the rest of the rocks out of Derek's line of sight. 

Like it's _hiding_. 

Derek immediately averts his eyes, creeped out beyond all fucking belief. So Stiles has a pet rock that's actually alive. It's not any weirder than anything else he's seen from the spark. Not by a long shot. 

Stiles comes back in the room with two mugs of steaming tea. Derek takes the one offered to him, and then Stiles is plopping down on the couch right next to him, leaning back against a pillow and propping his knees up, his bare toes almost nudging against Derek's thigh. 

“Sorry,” he says to Derek as soon as he's settled, glancing around his own living room. “That's why I haven't invited you over yet. I knew you wouldn't like it here.” 

“No, it's -” he swallows a sip of tea - orange and spice, it tastes like - to give him some time to come up with an unoffensive adjective to describe the energy in this room. “...cool.” 

Stiles snorts. “I can tell when you're freaked out, you know. Just like you can smell my emotions, I can gauge your energy pretty well.” 

“Hold on,” Derek says, giving Stiles a smirk. “Are you _actually_ about to tell me what it is you can _do_?” 

Stiles' lips purse together in a tight smile, and he rolls his eyes. 

“You dodge the question every single time I ask it, Stiles.” 

“Christ,” Stiles rubs at one of his eyes, shakes his head. “What do you want to know, Derek?” 

“I'd like to know why there's a rock, an _inanimate object_ , hiding from me on your bookshelf, for starters?” 

Stiles shoots out a laugh, so loud and hard that he almost spills some tea down over his own legs. “That's – I was trying to work on my energy throwing -”

“Energy throwing?” 

The spark looks annoyed at having to explain it, but does it all the same. “Taking my magic and putting it in something else, basically.” 

“You can do that?” 

“In theory,” he sounds disgruntled, a case of the sour grapes. “That rock is a failed attempt. I've named him Steven; he doesn't do anything except sit there and give people the creeps. Obviously.” He shrugs, picking at a loose thread on his sweatpants. “Sometimes Steven rolls himself around.” 

“So he – _it_ ,” he corrects himself, refusing to go down the path of psychosis that Stiles must be going down to so casually refer to a fucking rock with a gendered pronoun, “isn't like...dangerous?” 

Stiles narrows his eyes in thought, glancing over to the shelf with puckered lips. “Between you and I – sometimes I get scared he'll throw himself at me. Like, stone me to death, you know?” 

Derek stares at him. His first real explanation for any of Stiles' magic he's ever gotten, and it's about a rock coming to life and stoning people to death with a mind of its own. 

“I'm really just a spark, Derek,” Stiles continues on, fixing Derek with a steady gaze. “I do things sparks can do, I'm filled with magic, I use it. What more is there to know?” 

Literally, millions of things. There are _millions_ of things that Derek wishes he could know about Stiles, about his spark, about his life, in general. For some reason Stiles is always holding back, on that stuff. 

Stiles shifts himself closer, so that his toes are touching Derek's thigh, leans his chin down on his arm as he drapes it across the tops of his knees. “Can I ask you something?” He searches Derek's face for a second. “It's a bit – personal.”

Derek runs his thumbs along the hot surface of the mug in his hands, watches as the steam rises up in the air. Makes a decision. “If I can ask you something personal back.” 

Stiles sucks in a breath, like maybe he'd been expecting that answer and now has to face the consequences for himself, has to make the choice of whether or not he really wants to risk it. Apparently, he decides that he does, because he smiles and nods his head in affirmation. 

“Ask away, then.” 

Long fingers run along his sweatpants again, as he takes a sip of his tea and stares at the profile of Derek's face. “What is it that you liked so much about Kate Argent?” 

He wasn't expecting it, but he really should have been. His friends have always been too tactful to directly ask him outside of arguments, ( _god, what do you even see in that bitch?_ ) - but those types of outbursts never really required an answer from Derek. His own family has barely ever asked him about it; she was in his life for so long that she became more or less commonplace, no matter how she might've seemed to stand out as a sore thumb to everyone looking in from the outside. 

This is the first time he's ever just been asked. Why? Why was he with Kate for so long, when it's so easy now in hindsight to see the way that she treated him was insufferable? That he should've left way before the rings ever came into the equation? 

He stares directly down into his mug and shrugs his shoulders. “She was familiar.” 

The spark cocks his head to the side as he appraises Derek's face, squinting. “Familiar?” 

Derek nods up and down, slowly. “Yeah. Safe, I guess. I guess I always thought that staying within my comfort zone was always more important than – being happy.” He listens as Stiles swallows uncomfortably, as he shifts minutely in his place on the couch. 

“So, then, you weren't happy.” 

“No,” Derek says honestly, “I never was, with her.” No matter how much he really and truly did love her...he was never happy. Sometimes love and happiness are two separate things – he's learned that. But how weird to speak it out loud and acknowledge it. It sometimes cripples him to think about how eight years of his life went down the drain in the blink of an eye, that he wasted his time in misery just because he was too nervous, too guarded to go out and try and find something else. Someone else. 

“Well,” Stiles begins in a cheery voice. “I'm not sorry we destroyed her clothes.” 

Honestly – Derek isn't sorry either. Even if he gets caught, even if he has to spend three paychecks in a row on damages for everything he destroyed...he's not sorry. For everything else with Kate, he very certainly is sorry; sorry that he never had the strength to just walk the fuck away from her. So it's nice to have one thing, one single thing that he did in regards to Kate that he can look back on and just sort of laugh at, now, instead of feeling regret, hot and heavy. 

“My turn, then,” Derek drops his mug down on the coffee table, right beside the ghost research book, and turns his body to face Stiles fully. The spark sits there, cradling his knees up against his chest like a defensive mechanism, blinking owl eyes at Derek. Derek examines him seriously, and he knows that with his one personal question he's being allotted, he has to ask the most important thing. The one thing that he's been wondering, the one thing that's probably the answer to almost every thing that's so mysterious about Stiles as a person. 

He juts his chin, locks eyes with Stiles. “What's really inside of that bat?” 

Stiles smiles. Not a happy smile. Not a smile with any humor. A sad, blank smile, that doesn't come anywhere close to his eyes. He drops his eyes down so his lashes are resting against his cheeks, and clears his throat. “It's not – simple to explain.” 

When Derek doesn't respond except to nod his head up and down in understanding, Stiles sucks in a deep breath and lifts his eyes again – there's a far away look, there, like he's going someplace else, inside his own head. 

“My mother was a spark, too,” he starts, quietly. “It's kind of where I got my own.” 

Some sparks are born to two humans, some sparks are born to two wolves, some are born to one human one wolf and so on and so forth – there's not always any telling where the spark itself actually comes from, in certain kids. Sometimes they just crop up out of nowhere, mysteriously as they are. But the fact that Stiles' mother is (was) a spark means that he probably is more powerful than a spark born from two humans. Not necessarily surprising, and it actually explains quite a bit. 

“She passed away -” he pauses, focuses his eyes on a specific point somewhere over Derek's head. “Fucked me up, you know? It's like – I learned every thing from her. I learned how to control my spark from her, how to use my magic and – you know? All the stuff that...” he trails off, like he can't continue, and Derek nods his head. 

“Yeah,” he says in a rough voice. “I know.” 

Stiles takes another few seconds, settling his eyes on another point past Derek's head as he swallows a lump in his throat. “The thing about magic when you're young and you have so much of it is you start to think you can kinda do anything. Like – you're invincible. You could stop the world from turning if you tried hard enough.”

It's not a feeling Derek would particularly know very well. He never for any period of time thought that what he had been given by being born a werewolf made him invincible – quite the contrary. Despite the super speed and super strength and super senses, there are disadvantages; like being a slave to the moon and the tides, having a kryptonite in the form of silly little purple flowers. But he can understand how a person with magic, with that kind of power running through their veins, could develop that line of thinking. 

He's seen it with his own eyes, after all. It's hard for him to not think that Stiles really could stop the world from turning. If he wanted. 

“I started playing with stuff I – I shouldn't have been. I thought I could handle it, because I could handle anything, right?” He smiles ruefully, makes eye contact with Derek for the first time since he began this story, and they're not like they usually are. They're not intimidating, or unsettling. They're open. Like some kind of wall has come down, and now it's just him – not the magic. Not the power.

Just _Stiles_. Vulnerable. 

“I was a stupid kid, and I...” he shakes his head again, keeps eye contact. Derek can read it loud and clear from the context, what he can't seem to be able to speak out loud - he's seen enough movies with sparks, hasn't he? 

“You tried to bring her back,” he offers in a tight voice. 

Stiles nods. “And I failed.” 

In the movies, the rituals done to perform that level of necromancy, that kind of spell, really, are kind of...intense. He doesn't think he has any place, any whatsoever, to ask Stiles what exactly it entailed, what he had to do to himself to even _attempt_ to pull something like that off. 

What realms he had to get into contact with. Where he had to _go_. 

He's seen things like sparks literally dragging themselves through the pits of Hell, fire and torment and smoke billowing in the air, to try and bring someone back. Seen sparks cut their own hearts out of their chests, sever limbs off their bodies as sacrifices, eating live spiders and drowning themselves on purpose to get to the other side.

If Stiles had to go through even a sixteenth of any of that kind of suffering, as a _kid_...

Just to fail. It's no wonder he doesn't like to talk about it. 

“Funny thing, though,” he smiles in a way that suggests it's really not funny. Not at all. “...whatever creature handles those spirit channels must have a real interesting sense of humor, thought some thirteen year old kid trying to fuck around with it was pretty god damn funny - because I didn't come back empty handed.” 

Without warning, he's leaning forward, dropping his own mug on the coffee table beside Derek's. For a moment he's hesitating, shooting Derek an anxious look, filled with uncertainty, fear – then, he's lowering his eyes and pulling his black t-shirt up and off over his head. 

It's the first time that Derek's seen him without his shirt on. And he understands why the second that Stiles turns and shows him the wide expanse of his back. The wolf's breath catches in his throat as he takes in the sight in front of him; it looks like – it looks like his veins are sick. That's the only way Derek can think to explain it. 

Black and blue lines scratched across his back, around his shoulder blades, pinkish marks, purple all around the edges like bruising. And it's huge – almost takes up the entire expanse of his upper back. Derek's never seen anything like it. Doesn't know what it is, what to make of it. 

Stiles tilts his head to the side so he can glance at Derek over his shoulder with one eye. “I didn't know what to do with it – I tried to...” 

Derek hovers his hand above the marks, furrows his brow; for a few moments he genuinely doesn't understand what Stiles is getting at. When it comes to him, his hand freezes in mid-air, fingers almost reaching out to touch his back, and he lets out a long breath. “They sent you back her spark.” And he tried to take it inside of himself. 

“Nearly killed me,” he admits with a humorless chuckle, lowering his eyes again and pursing his lips. 

_There's only so much magic that can fit in one person_ , Derek recites Stiles' words from weeks ago in his head. These marks are - burns from magic, scars from an overdose. The thought of a thirteen year old Stiles going through something like that, just a fucking kid – he wishes he could think of anything, even a single thing, to say to him to comfort him. But what's he supposed to say? 

Instead, he puts his fingers on the harshest lines of the scar, and Stiles' back jerks involuntarily from the touch before he relaxes into it. “And I had to do something with it,” he continues on in a quiet voice. “Turned it into a weapon.” 

Derek traces his fingers along the black lines – of all the things that he thought were inside of that baseball bat, his dead mother's spark was not exactly his first guess. Now that he knows that, he feels guilty for all the times he called it ridiculous. 

“You don't come back from something like that the same,” Stiles shivers against Derek's fingers, sniffles. “That's – what your sisters saw in my eyes? What you can sense about me? Where I went when I -” he pauses, clears his throat. “...I just didn't come back natural. People are right to be unsettled by me.”

Derek moves his hand upward, wraps his fingers around Stiles' shoulder and tugs gently on it to get the spark to turn around and face him, look him in the eyes. When they make eye contact, Stiles frowns – he looks ashamed, cut open, thrown his still beating heart out on the table. 

He wraps his fingers around Stiles' chin, puts as much force into his words as he can. “You don't scare me, Stiles.” And he looks surprised by the words – if maybe a little skeptical. His jaw sets, and he tries to look away, but Derek keeps his grip on his smooth chin firm, follows the spark's eyes with his head. “I mean it.”

Maybe he is unnatural. The scar on his back suggests as much, and the fact that he has twice the power of a normal spark definitely suggests as much – but is that _bad_? Is _that_ dangerous? 

Stiles leans forward and kisses Derek on the mouth. Feather light, gentle and smooth, working his jaw against Derek's fingers and sweeping into Derek's mouth with his tongue. Derek goes with it, following the pace and mood that Stiles is setting, happy to have the spark's taste in his mouth for the first time in what feels like ages, happy to be so close to him again. Even in spite of everything that he just told him – it doesn't make him uncomfortable to be around him, certainly not uncomfortable to kiss him. 

If anything, Derek only has even more respect for Stiles than he did when all this started. Reverence, even. 

When the spark pulls away, he looks Derek dead in the eyes, and says in a very frank voice, “And what I just told you. That's not something I would tell someone I was _just friends_ with.” There's a pause, where the two of them are just staring at each other, letting Stiles' words wash over them, the implications. “Do you understand?” 

Derek doesn't hesitate before he nods. “Are we -” he swallows, has to physically force himself to keep on looking into Stiles' eyes as he continues to speak, “...are we done with casual?” 

The spark smiles, his first genuine, happy smile for what seems like hours, now. “I think I'm changing my philosophy, again.” 

It's almost scary how relieved that Derek is to hear that. 

He leans forward and snags Stiles' pink lips again, lets Stiles wraps his arms around Derek's neck, curl his lengthy fingers into the collar of Derek's shirt. They're close enough that all Derek can really smell anymore is just _Stiles_ – not Steven the alive rock or the weird plants or the tea – just him. His magic, and his hair, and his skin, and his lips. 

Derek has taken the time to notice that Stiles has pretty excellent lips. They're one thing to look at, though, one thing to admire as the spark talks or chews at with his teeth, and another thing entirely to feel against his own. Soft and gentle, while sure and insistent; in the sense that he knows what he's doing, expertly moves them against Derek's, knowing when to break a kiss to start another one right back up milliseconds later. Pulling Derek in and then drawing him out, again and again. 

Somewhere along the way Stiles has dragged one of his hands down Derek's shirt, skirting over a nipple and eliciting a physical reaction – Derek's back arching into the touch – before he drags his fingers down lower and lower, dropping them down into the front of Derek's jeans. 

With fingers that long and dexterous, poking at first along what they can find of Derek's dick through the fabric before they begin to stroke gently, it doesn't take very much time at all for Derek to get thicker, harder. Stiles makes a noise of approval into Derek's mouth as he feels the change underneath his hand – before he breaks the kiss sloppily and levels Derek with a heated look. 

“You asked me last time,” he breathes, one hand scratching behind Derek's neck like he likes to do and the other still resting in his lap, “if I had a preference?” 

“Yeah,” Derek says hotly, “you said it depends.” 

The spark smiles. “Do you?” 

Derek's not sure he likes being put on the spot like this – he's being given the option to take the reins and direct this entire thing from here, when he's the one who more or less has no idea what he's doing. Porn only gets a guy so far, right? As many times as he's watched two men fucking in porn videos, it's sort of...different in real life. He knows he won't be sure of himself, knows he'll have to take seconds to ask if he's doing it right. 

Stiles must be able to read his face, or sense it in the air like Stiles is always claiming he can, because he says, “you can pick, Derek.” 

He bites his lip and strokes his eyes up and down Stiles' bare chest – he's not toned or defined or muscular, like Derek is, doesn't have that kind of easy physical strength, but he's supple and firm; pale skin waiting to be marked and flushed. And seeing skin like that...well. Derek's a werewolf. It's a natural instinct for him to grab what he wants and claim it as his own, often times roughly. 

So, yeah, For tonight, Derek knows his preference. “I want to fuck you.” 

And Stiles grins like he was hoping Derek would say that, and the wolf knows he's made the right choice this time. He presses a kiss to Derek's lips, and then another to his cheek, jawline, leaving wet spots all along his face and making Derek feel warm and important, and then he's leaning his body backwards and away, rising from the couch and citing something about _gotta get something_. 

As he turns and walks away, Derek stares at that messy scar on his back, again. He cranes his neck and watches as Stiles vanishes down the hallway – and then a voice calls back to him - “bubblegum or mint?” 

It takes him a moment to understand what the fuck Stiles is talking about. He's spent the last eight years of his life with a woman who produces lubricant the natural way, all right? And it's not like he was ever venturing back to her ass, or that she was ever shoving a strap-on into his, because again – they were boring, sexually. There really was never any need for lube that wasn't the _tingle_ kind, and those didn't exactly come in, like, flavors. That he knows of. 

“Er,” he scratches the back of his neck. “Mint?” 

“I knew you'd say that,” the voice calls again, and then the footsteps are coming back down the creaky floorboards.

When Stiles deposits a small greenish tube – looking like a god damn sample size that he pilfered from a college sex seminar – on the coffee table beside their cold mugs of tea, Derek has a realization. It's truly, truly amazing how long it's taken him to sink this into his brain, a full five minutes of time passing before he really truly realized...

He's about to have sex with Stiles. Not a quick blowjob, or a handjob, or just plain old necking. But actual sex. 

It becomes even more apparent when Stiles thumbs the waistband of his sweatpants and tugs them off, and he's not even wearing any _underwear_ , and Derek is just staring up at him – eyeballing his dick for probably way longer than is necessary or comfortable, before flicking his eyes back up to the spark's face. 

Stiles points at Derek. “You're still wearing clothes.” 

Derek glances down at himself, notices the same thing. “Oh.” Right. He fumbles quickly to tug his shirt up over his head, deposits it neatly on the couch right beside him, and then stands up so he can work off his pants. Stiles just stands back, naked as the day he was born and looking like he could give a shit about it as he crosses his arms over his chest, and watches as Derek undoes his belt, pulls his jeans and boxers down over his legs into a pile on the floor. 

He picks them up and folds them right next to the shirt, turns around and looks Stiles in the face. 

“Wow,” Stiles intones. “I've never been with a guy so considerate of where he tosses his clothes in my house.” 

“Well,” Derek rubs the back of his neck, scrapes his eyes up and down Stiles' bare body again because he can't help it. “...it'd be rude to just throw them anywhere.” Also he wanted something to do with his hands, something to do in general, because he's still not sure what to _do_ , here. 

“Okay,” Stiles takes a step closer to him, drops his arms down to his side and holds his palms out a bit away from his body, as if he's saying _here I am_. “How do you want me, then?” 

The question is so innocuous, a genuine search for information of how Derek wants to position himself and Stiles for the _act_ , and yet the way Stiles says it. The way he drops his voice low, tilts his head to the side to expose his throat – it literally makes Derek's dick twitch. Stiles notices that, raises his eyebrows as he glances downwards in that general direction. 

His mind is flipping through a mental book of all the positions he even knows of – hands and knees, of course. Um – Stiles cocks one eyebrow upwards, licks his lips – um...cowgirl? The more seconds that pass, the more amused Stiles looks, flicking his eyes away for a second to think something to himself that Derek doesn't even want to know – so he just reaches out and grabs Stiles by his shoulders. 

Stiles moves where Derek pulls him. He lets himself be turned around with a smirk on his face, drops to his knees on the couch when Derek nudges him against it, and then leans his elbows on the hard back of the seat. He turns to look over his shoulder as he spreads his legs wider, watches as Derek picks up the bottle of lube like he's about to decipher a god damn bomb – interrupts that shit show in a low voice. 

“I can finger myself,” he says – not in a way that suggests that Derek wouldn't know how, but in a genuinely helpful way. Like he's taking care of something, doing something for Derek, instead of for himself, really. “You can watch.” 

_You can watch_. Derek's brain fizzles as he holds the lube out to Stiles on mental autopilot, and it's really all he can do to stand there and stare as Stiles squeezes a quarter sized amount onto his fingers, rubs them together – they shine slick in the dim lights of his living room. 

He arches his back a bit as he drapes himself more over the back of the couch, and then presses his wet fingers against his entrance. He slides his index in first, and Derek watches with rapt attention at the way he works it in and out of himself so easily – not slow and not quick, but persistent. Derek can't help but wonder how many times he's done this to himself, before, how many times he's finger-fucked himself and gotten off that way. 

From the way he draws a second finger in with little more than a quick intake of breath and a dropping of his hips into the sensation, he'd guess the spark's done it enough times to be adept at it. 

By the time the third finger is slipping inside, Stiles has dropped his neck down, his head dangling in-between his shoulders as small, helpless noises come out of his mouth, all from _himself_. For a second, the wolf entertains the idea of taking a seat on the coffee table to see if Stiles could make himself come this way, (he definitely, definitely could), but shakes that thought of for the much more favorable thought of taking care of that himself. 

He reaches forward, grabbing Stiles' wrist to still his movements and tug his fingers out of himself. Stiles lifts his head to look back at Derek with a lazy smile, like he's already half fucked out, and then he's arching his back again, spreading his legs wider in the couch cushions. “C'mon,” he says, while Derek reaches for the discarded bottle beside one of Stiles' thighs to slick himself up. 

The wolf climbs up onto the couch behind Stiles, situates his own knees carefully around Stiles' legs as he strokes the lube up and down himself carefully. 

Stiles jostles under the shifted weight but keeps his head turned back to stare directly at Derek. “Remember what I said – don't go easy on me.” 

He swallows thickly, poking his fingers at Stiles' wet, ready entrance. Stiles jerks at the touch, letting out a panting breath, and Derek can't wait to see what other kinds of reactions he'll be dragging out of the spark in the minutes to come. Without much preamble, not giving himself any time to sit there and worry and think too much on it, he slides himself inside of Stiles' body...

And it's honestly better than he ever thought it could be. It's tight, so _fucking_ tight, and warm, and Stiles' entire body shudders as Derek bottoms himself out. He had planned to take it slow. He planned on fucking Stiles more or less experimentally, adjusting his hips this way and that to find the right spots, testing what works and what doesn't, what Stiles likes and what he doesn't. 

That more or less goes straight out the window as soon as he fucks himself in and out of Stiles for the first time, and the spark makes the single sexiest noise that Derek has heard outside of porn, arches his back, hisses, “faster, fuck me, come on.” 

He wants it faster, and harder, and Derek's being put just far enough over the edge by the heady scent of Stiles' arousal and magic, the feel of him wrapped around Derek's dick, that he's not in much of a place to deny him, that. 

So, he does. He drops his hands on either side of Stiles' elbows on the back of the couch, and fucks him. Fast, and hard, in a way he can't say he's ever really done before. It's amazing he knows how to do this, amazing that he can just fall directly into this – it must be the way Stiles eggs him on with his moaning and cursing and mutterings of Derek's name under his breath, and it must be Stiles' scent, must be how he arches back into Derek's thrusts so desperately. 

It must just be Stiles, he thinks. Sex has never been like _this_ before. 

He leans down and kisses the scars on Stiles' shoulders, licks along the grooves of it and tastes magic and skin and caramel-coffee; Stiles just drops his head again and makes a pitiful noise crossed between a moan and a whimper. Derek grabs onto his hips, digging his fingers in, and tries to swivel his own in a quick pause of the fucking, searching and digging around until -

Stiles cries out and thumps his arms down off the back of the couch, losing his footing for a second there. 

“Yeah?” Derek asks, well beyond the point of full sentences. 

“There, yes, fuck,” Stiles pants, pulls himself back up onto his elbows lazily like he's having a hard time moving. 

Derek angles himself to try and hit that spot again, and again, while Stiles absolutely and positively comes apart underneath him. Fingers gripping onto the fabric of the couch in a vice, forehead slamming against the wooden upholstery, shudders and moans and whimpers – and Derek thinks he could get used to this. 

He tries reaching his hand down to tug on Stiles' neglected dick that's just been bobbing along against his stomach this entire time, but Stiles pushes his hand away with his own shaking fingers, says, “let me come on your dick, please, _please_ ,” and Derek's just lucky he didn't have his own orgasm right then and there just from hearing how ruined Stiles' voice is. The desperation, there, the _please_. 

Instead, he wraps his arm around Stiles' middle to pull him closer, flush against his own chest, and tries to make it as good as possible for him. It isn't long, with Derek working hard to hit Stiles' prostrate as many times in tandem as he can, until Stiles' entire body starts stiffening up. 

Last time Derek watched Stiles have an orgasm, his spark was out in the open for him to look at and see in real time – the pulsing, blinding light of Stiles' release was incredible in its own rite. He kind of thought it couldn't get any better than that, any more dramatic or intense as that. 

Stiles whimpers once, twice, three times, the octave rising each and every time – and the light on the living room ceiling, the lamp in the corner of the room, the kitchen light, all surge at the same time. Brightening, for just a second, before blowing out with clicks and fizzles, putting Stiles and Derek in the dark save for the lights spilling in from the street outside of Stiles' house. 

Derek's in too deep to pay much attention – he can still see just fine. He watches as Stiles flops forwards, spent and sluggish and limp, and it's only seconds until he's following up Stiles' cinematic orgasm with one a lot less dramatic. He pounds himself through it inside of Stiles, who's really just a doll underneath Derek's hands at this point, and when he finishes, he drops his hand down onto Stiles' back to rub up and down, and up and down. 

“Fuck,” Stiles says. “I'm sorry.” 

Derek's still in sex-mind. That lurky part of his brain where all he can think about is how awesome that just was. So his response is, intelligent as ever, “huh?” 

“Sorry,” he repeats again, still draped over the back of the couch like a limp noodle. “The lights.” 

Derek blinks around himself. Right. It's pitch dark in here. Stiles blew the lights out when he came. Right. 

“That hasn't – happened...” Stiles flicks a finger, once, twice, and a lamp sitting on the desk next to the television clicks on eerily. “...in a long time.” 

“What?” Derek asks, dragging his fingers up and down Stiles' back in a constant pattern. “The lights? Is that – a thing you do?” 

It's quiet for a second. 

Stiles pulls himself upright, again, and Derek takes the hint to pull himself out from inside of Stiles, gently, thinking that Stiles might be a little sore. When Derek drops his body down beside Stiles instead of behind him, the spark leans back on his knees and examines the mess he's made of his couch pillows with a grimace. “It doesn't normally happen,” is all he offers in a cryptic tone of voice. “Fuck. Okay. Shit.” He meets Derek's eyes, a small smile on his face. “Was I all right for your first guy?” 

And Derek can't believe he even has to ask that question. 

In spite of what Stiles had said about the lights out orgasm being an oddity and not something that usually happens, it keeps happening. 

After every single time, Stiles looks even more shocked than the last, thumping his head down onto the nearest possible surface (often times Derek's shoulders), moaning out a sorry, flicking his fingers at the nearest light source that didn't get blown to bits from the force of Stiles coming. After the sixth time, with Stiles starfished out on the bed while Derek rifles around in his utility closet for the spare lightbulbs, he has to ask. There's only so many times he can buy packs of lightbulbs in a single week before people start giving him weird looks at the hardware store. 

“You said that wasn't normal,” Derek reminds him from inside the closet. He can't see Stiles' reaction – he can only hear a sharp intake of breath followed by a sigh, some sheets rustling. 

“It _isn't_ , all right?” 

“Yet, here I am,” he finds one lone bulb hiding behind a pile of mildew-scented towels, snatches it up and moves back into his bedroom. “Wandering around in the dark -”

“Oh, shut up. You can see just fine.” 

“I just want to know why is all.” He unscrews the dead bulb from the bedside lamp, while in the dark, Stiles rises up to a sitting position on the bed and blinks his mostly-human eyes at what he can make out of Derek's silhouette. “You obviously can't control it, so -”

The light clicks on as the new bulb is replaced, and Stiles squints against the sudden brightness of it. “No,” Stiles agrees with a head shake, “I can't control it, and it's not normal – it hasn't happened to me since...” he trails off, swallows thickly. His eyes flick somewhere else for a fraction of a second and even Derek can tell that he's going somewhere else in his own head; another time, maybe. Another place altogether. “...in a long time.” 

Derek tosses the dead bulb into the garbage before walking back over to the bed where Stiles is sitting with the sheets wrapped around his middle, covering himself from the waist down but leaving his upper body bare. He takes a seat right beside the spark, fingering along the edges of the scars on his back, and frowns. “Okay. So...”

Stiles scratches at his face and sighs into his own lap. “It only usually happens when it's -” he gestures into the air in a way that Derek doesn't quite understand, a quick shooting of his hands forwards. “...important.” 

The wolf cocks his head to the side, trails his eyes up and down the profile of Stiles' face, the freckles and the pale skin. “Important.” 

“Yeah,” he breathes out, turning his face to look Derek directly in the eyes. “Someone important. Someone that my spark – someone that my spark trusts.” 

Derek stares into Stiles' eyes and doesn't bother trying to ignore the flood of warmth he feels at hearing Stiles say something like that to him. He doesn't have to ignore those feelings he gets around the spark anymore, not since they've stopped calling themselves casual, stopped dancing around each other like they're playing a game. Obviously, there's nothing to be played at, where Stiles and Derek are concerned. “I'm important,” he reiterates, nodding his head like he's convincing himself to believe it. 

Stiles nods right back at him. “Yeah,” his voice cracks around the word, like he's nervous. “Yeah.” 

Derek makes a decision then and there. It's lightning quick in his head, there like a flash, and stays as if the rod struck something and left a fire burning in its wake. He can't shake the thought as Stiles scratches at his face with nervous fingers, leans into the hand on his back and sighs happily. Maybe it's not fair to start thinking about this when he hasn't even mentioned it to Stiles yet, but the last two weeks of his life with Stiles have been – enlightening. The last few months as a matter of fact, since the first time he met the spark have been enlightening. Life changing. And that's not nothing. 

So, he decides. He suggests going to sleep, flicks off the bedside lamp, and decides.

The next morning, Lydia sits across from him in her living room, on one of her plush white couches, her fluffy cat perched right next to her cleaning its paws haughtily. She has her legs crossed, one over the other, while the foot dangling in the air bobs up and down – in annoyance or patience, Derek can never be sure with her. It's all he can do to sit in his own spot across from her, hands clasped in-between his spread knees, staring right back at her. 

Next to him, Kira shifts uncomfortably and lets out a soft sigh, like she's not enjoying this stare off in the least bit, whatsoever. None of the pack is, really; the only person (creature) in the entire room who looks even vaguely _okay_ with what's going on here is the cat, mostly because it has no idea of the speech that Derek just gave, no concept of what the tension in the room is all about, here. 

Derek knew he had to be upfront with not just Lydia, but the entire pack of what he and Stiles were getting themselves into. It's not a personal decision to involve himself with a spark in an official capacity. He knows that. If he and Stiles are getting serious (and they are – they really are), then the pack needs to know that, needs to be prepared for the possibility that they might get six times as many challenges just from having that kind of shiny thing in their possession, needs to be prepared for the chance that Stiles could be joining the pack by way of becoming Derek's personal spark, needs to know and understand what that means for all of them. 

Stiles and Derek haven't gone a day without seeing each other in two weeks, now. Not since the night they first had sex and Stiles told him the big secret about himself, opened himself up to Derek in all ways that he could've. It wasn't nothing, they both knew that as it was happening. It was important, and significant, and maybe they haven't looked each other in the eyes and called each other boyfriends, but it's without a doubt _serious_ , now. 

When Derek woke up this morning to find the spark still sleeping peacefully, his back turned to Derek, the sickly black veins on full display...he knew he couldn't keep hiding Stiles from the rest of the pack. It wouldn't be right or fair to be dragging that kind of liability into the pack's lives without even letting them meet the kid in an official capacity. 

And Derek has every intention of keeping Stiles around, now. It's so useless to try denying it anymore.

“You realize what you're asking of me, Derek,” Lydia finally pipes up, still tapping her foot in mid-aid, arms crossed over her chest. “What you're asking of the pack.” 

Derek nods his head. “Of course I do.” 

A couple more beats of silence pass, filled with nothing but the sound of Scott scuffing his feet on the tiled floor anxiously as he watches this interaction with rapt attention. 

Then, Lydia is uncrossing her arms to free one hand to reach up and scratch in-between her brow, shaking her head. “I said you couldn't do casual. Didn't I say that?” 

Derek nods, again. 

“I knew you'd do this, I just _knew_ it. And, of course, you have to pick the single most bizarre spark of them all – the one that apparently scares the shit out of your sisters and gets you to break into people's houses for fun -”

“The one that saved the entire pack's lives by beating off the pack that you pissed off,” Derek interrupts in a chilly tone, narrowing his eyes at his alpha. 

She purses her lips across from him. Knowing that he's right, but unwilling to speak out loud that she had fucked up and Stiles was the one who cleaned up her mess, that time. 

“Be that as it may,” she says in a low voice, “I don't trust him, I don't know him, and I'm not entirely sure I want to.” 

Derek drags his hand across his forehead – he had been expecting this reaction. Lydia has always been very selective about she lets hang out around her pack, even more so about who she lets in the pack. It took three months of convincing and arguing on Kira and Isaac and Derek's part to get her to give Scott a chance to join the ranks, and even then, she eyed him suspiciously for two months thereafter. This isn't something she takes lightly, not at all, and Derek respects that. He really does. 

But he's getting the sense that she thinks that he's taking it lightly. That he takes _Stiles_ lightly. Which just isn't true, not even in the remotest sense. 

“Someone with that kind of history – a _necromancer_ -”

Derek had to tell them about, too. He wishes he didn't, because it wasn't his story to tell, not by a long shot, and it only makes things that much harder for Stiles' case, here. “He's not -”

“Sparks who have performed that ritual before,” she cuts him off in a clipped tone of voice, leaning forward in her seat, eyes shining with something he can't quite identify – possibly awe, or horror, or something crossed in between the two. For the dozenth time, Derek wonders what it was that actually happened to Stiles when he decided to do that at thirteen years old. He figures it's a google search away – but with the look on Lydia's face, now...maybe he doesn't want to know. “...sparks who are willing to put themselves through that – when they come back, they -”

“They're not the same anymore,” Derek finishes for her. “I _know_ that. He wasn't fucking around in the dark arts for the fun of it, Lydia, he was willing to do that for his mother – isn't that the kind of loyalty that makes _pack_?” 

Lydia purses her lips again, but this time she averts her green eyes to stare off to the side, away from the rest of the pack, jaw set tight. Silently conceding the point. 

“He's really amazing,” Scott offers up in a tentative voice. “Just – you know. I've seen him in action and he's...something else.” Having that kind of a force in the pack is hard to turn down, at face value at least, and he can see the edges of Lydia's resolve cracking the more she thinks about it. 

“It's not like I'm asking you to put him in the pack right this very second,” Derek offers up. “I haven't even talked to him about it –“ mostly because he's a little nervous of what Stiles' reaction would be. There's no doubt in Derek's mind that he knows exactly what getting serious with a werewolf means, not a single doubt in Derek's mind that he's thought about the idea of pack and what it'll mean for him, but...still. It's a lot. “I just want you to meet him.” 

Lydia meets his eyes again, and another staring match starts up. She has the power, if she felt like using it, to make Derek stay way from Stiles. She could command him to not see the spark anymore, keep them apart, keep Stiles far far away from her pack with his dangerous magic and his black scars and wash her hands of the entire situation. She _could_ do that, so easily, with one snap of her fingers and a glow of her eyes. 

But she'd never do that. No matter what, she couldn't even _think_ about doing something like that to one of her betas. She knows that if Derek's coming to her now, practically _begging_ her to give Stiles a fucking chance, then it's important to him. Stiles is important to him. She couldn't get in between that, she just couldn't do it. 

“It feels a lot to me like you're staring down the barrel of a fucking loaded gun, here, Derek.” 

Of course he is. With magic, there's really always only one wrong move, one mistake, one mishap, in between magic and everything going to absolute shit. Everyone knows that. Stiles better than anyone else, he would wager. 

That's just a risk he's willing to take. 

She must be able to read this decision in his face, must be able to sense that he's not going to relent on this, because she rolls her eyes with finality, and says, “Fine. Invite him over.” 

There's an unspoken wave of satisfaction, of victory, that rolls from Derek and the rest of the pack all at once. Lydia just sits there with a pinched expression on her face, like she's not entirely glad of these proceedings but has no choice but to submit to the majority.

Derek figures now is as good a time as any; texts Stiles to come over, gives him the address, and then spends the next fifteen or so minutes listening to the pack chatter excitedly about what kind of cool tricks they can ask Stiles to do for them as soon as he gets here. Lydia purses her lips at the idea of letting Stiles levitate her cat, but the rest of the pack thinks it sounds like a great idea.

By the time Derek is smelling Stiles' familiar scent approaching the house, the sound of leaves and twigs crunching outside around the familiar gait and footfalls, it's barely been twenty minutes. 

He scrunches his eyebrows together, excuses himself from the pack to walk over to the front door right as he hears Stiles coming up the front porch steps. When he pulls it open, Stiles is approaching with a blank expression on his face, smelling slightly of anxiety and nerves, and Derek chalks it up to the fact that he's about to engage in the werewolf equivalent of meeting the family as he rakes his eyes up and down the spark's familiar form. 

Lydia lives all the way deep the preserve, in a huge clearing – give or take, ten miles outside of official city limits. Stiles lives well within city limits. It took him less than twenty god damn minutes, with no car, to make it all the way out here. 

He gives Stiles a look. “Level with me just one time,” he says as the spark stops in front of him, face still blank. “Can you _fucking_ teleport?” 

Stiles smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. “I have my ways.” It's the same cryptic answer that he'd given the last time Derek asked that question, months ago, now, but it's not said with the usual verve. There's something tight about his body language – his eyes keep flicking over to glance at the woods as surreptitiously as possible, like he's waiting for something to come shooting out to attack him at any second. 

Derek glances at the woods himself. Sees nothing except for darkness, trees, underbrush. He takes a deeper inhale of Stiles' scent and finds that the anxiety he smelled when he first caught the scent isn't as shallow as he thought it was – it's more...solid. Direct. Like there's something in particular he's not just anxious of, but – frightened of. 

All the time Derek's spent with the spark, now, all the different emotions he's smelled, all the different looks he's seen on his face, he has never, never once, seen genuine fear. 

It's enough that Derek pauses, puts his hand on the spark's shoulder. He still gets that tingle of energy, but it's muted, now; as if Stiles' spark is accustomed to his touch, now, isn't perturbed enough to make a fuss about it. “Hey,” he says in a quiet voice, searching Stiles' face. “Are you okay?” 

Stiles' eyes float to the woods once more, almost of their own accord it seems, and then he furtively makes eye contact with Derek, like he has to force himself not to keep staring off into the woods, watching. “Yeah,” he says, and this time he makes the effort to make his smile seem genuine. “Just – late night in the woods. Kinda spooky.” 

It's not an explanation that Derek particularly buys, but he's not given any more time to stand there and grill Stiles for the truth – because he clears his throat before Derek can say anything else and says, “invite me in?” 

Right. Derek had forgotten about that tid bit. He hasn't had to invite Stiles inside his own house since the first time he did it, like once is all he needs for a free season pass ticket. He nods his head, says _come in_ , and Stiles does. 

This time, it's almost nothing. In comparison to the way that Derek's house shook like a fucking earthquake the first time that Stiles came inside, this is nothing. 

There's a gentle shuddering, the window panes rattling for a second, enough that the betas and Lydia all come walking out into the foyer with perplexed expressions on their faces. But other than that...it's like a gust of wind as compared to a hurricane. He wonders if maybe Derek's ghost-wolf is a lot more territorial than Lydia's is, or if maybe Derek's house is just more prone to shaking than Lydia's – and shrugs it off as nothing. 

Stiles stands in Lydia's nice foyer with his baseball bat resting in one hand, like it always is, wearing ripped up jeans, a plaid flannel over a dark black t-shirt, eerily out of place. He flicks his eyes over to where the rest of the pack is standing and staring at him, gives them a small smile. 

“Hi,” he greets, stepping around Derek to stretch his hand out to the person closest to him; who just so happens to be Lydia. Of course. “I'm Stiles.” 

Lydia stares at the hand like she half expects maggots to come scurrying off of it to climb up her own arms, and there's a dangerous few seconds where no one moves or says anything. Stiles' hand just hovering in mid-air, extended out towards her. Derek gets scared that Lydia's about to ruin this entire thing with yet another display of her inability to play nice; is about to step in and put his hands on Stiles' shoulders to guide him away from the alpha and onto Kira. 

Luckily, Lydia finally gives him a tight smile and puts her hand out to shake, as well. 

As soon as their hands are laced together in a shake, Lydia freezes solidly in place, looks directly into Stiles' eyes like she has no choice. 

Now that Derek knows what it is that people see in his eyes. Now that he knows it's death and pain and magic that should never have been there to begin with, it's not nearly as amusing to watch people get frazzled by Stiles' eyes and touch as it used to be.

Lydia retracts her hand quickly and tucks it against her side, glancing downwards at the bat in his hands for just a fraction of a second before looking back into his face for another tight smile. “Nice to meet you.” 

The same goes for Kira and Isaac and Scott, and then once everyone's made everyone's acquaintance, Derek puts his hand on Stiles' shoulder and pulls him back away from the pack to stand right next to him. Keeps it there in a gentle squeeze to give him reassurance, and says, “so this is him.” He hesitates over the next words, glancing down at Stiles' face. Stiles twists his head to look into his eyes, giving him a light smile and leaning into Derek's touch just slightly. “This is my spark.” 

After that, the night goes exactly how Derek kind of always thought it would go, if the pack were to ever meet Stiles officially. 

Lydia politely keeps her distance and watches his every move like a hawk, stares at the spot where Stiles props up his baseball bat as if she half expects it to sprout legs and attack someone. The cat absolutely despises whatever it is Stiles is giving off, goes skidding with a growl to hide under the couch the second Stiles steps into the living room – he suspects, very strongly, that if Lydia herself were a cat she'd be doing much of the same. 

Stiles doesn't wind up levitating the cat in spite of the pack's insistence, probably because he's perceptive enough to be able to tell that Lydia would not appreciate that one fucking bit – but he does do a couple of things just to placate the betas. He snaps his fingers to turn lights on and off, pulls a skateboard out from the inside of his flannel shirt (and Derek thinks that's Stiles' top secret way of getting around – or, at least, one of them), starts a small fire in the palm of his hand. 

The betas like him. Even though they eye him a little warily every time he steps a little too close, take a step back when he makes direct eye contact with them, they seem to warm up to him the longer he stays around. It's hard not to warm up to Stiles – he has this natural way of getting people to just _like_ him. He's cool, that way. They exchange phone numbers with him, and he assures them, in no uncertain terms, that they can call him any time, day or night, if they need help out of a bind. 

It's obvious that he has the betas in the palm of his hand, Derek included, has worked them all over and now has the support Derek was hoping he'd get – but as for Lydia...

She doesn't look at him like she's scared, anymore, so he figures that's progress. But she does look at him like she doesn't quite...trust. It's the same exact way she used to look at Scott before he was officially in the pack, the same way she always looked at Kate Argent (still looks at Kate Argent, frankly), the same look she gives anyone who tries to get too close to what she considers her things. It's the look of an alpha who has yet to be convinced of a person's well meaning. 

Which is a lot better than her just walking around hating the evil necromancer on principle. Progress. 

When Stiles climbs into the passenger seat of Derek's car at night's end, he frowns a little, and says, “Lydia hates me.” 

“No,” Derek says in a firm tone of voice, shaking his head as he starts the engine. “She's just – wary.” 

“Right,” Stiles huffs, “like that's so much better.” There's a pause, Stiles running his hands down the legs of his jeans like he's wiping sweat off his palms. “Do you think she'll ever be – not?” 

“Yes,” he says in just as firm a voice. “She's that way with everyone when she first meets them.” 

Stiles doesn't look particularly convinced, if the way he squints out into the path that Derek's headlights create in the woods with a tight frown is anything to go by. 

“Everyone else liked you, either way,” Derek promises, casting his eyes to Stiles as often as he can while still watching the road. It's interesting, how a person who normally seems so cocky, sure of himself, sarcastic and witty, can actually be incredibly insecure underneath all those defensive layers. It's something that Derek's learned about Stiles since they've gotten closer – he's not nearly as confident as he seems. The thought of someone disliking him, of having not impressed Derek's alpha, probably freaks him out more than anything else. 

Stiles smiles at him and nods his head. 

For the rest of the the ride he's quiet and reserved; much more so than he normally is. Typically in Derek's car he's jiggling his leg up and down and talking a mile a minute about something or other, poking fun at Derek's “old man driving”, demanding that they pull into the McDonald's Drive-Thru. But this time, he's almost silent. Sitting there stock still, staring out the windows intently as the woods fly past, narrowing his eyes into the shadows like he's keeping watch for something, making sure the coast is clear. 

Derek's not big on being the conversation starter, and normally Stiles takes care of that for him anyway. So this is – odd. Definitely odd, out of character, especially considering that he seemed to be fine back at Lydia's house with the pack and every thing. And Derek doesn't know where to start talking to him, if he even should, so he just sits there and drives to Stiles' house. 

The spark still smells of that same bizarre fear-scent that from Stiles feels out of place and like it definitely doesn't belong, there, not alongside the caramel-coffee and magic he always gives off. 

When he pulls up against the curb outside Stiles' house, he reminds Stiles that he has work in the morning and he can't stay over. Stiles visibly shrinks at that, frowning as he glances at his dark house outside the car window. “Oh,” his lips curl downwards even more, and another wave of anxiety floods inside the car – hot and bitter around Derek's nose. “Okay.” 

Derek doesn't have much of a choice; if he stays at Stiles' and they do their usual routine of fooling around and whatnot, he won't fall asleep until midnight and then oversleep in the morning because Stiles will turn off his alarm while still half-asleep and inside a dream. Like last time, when Derek had shown up an hour and a half late for work in one of Stiles' (too small) shirts, reeking of sex and magic to anyone who had the senses to smell that sort of thing all over his skin. 

Unable to stand the smell any longer, Derek reaches his hand out and drapes it against the side of the spark's throat, dips his finger underneath his shirt to splay out over the black and blue lines from his magical burns, a habit he's started picking up. He rests his index finger against the same puckered bit of skin he always does, leans over the center console to fix Stiles with a calculating look. “Are you all right?” 

“Fine,” Stiles says back instantly with a stiff smile. “Just – stressed out.” 

His heartbeat stutters, and Derek frowns. Liar Stiles may be in the eyes of some – he's never told a lie like _that_ to Derek before. And the worst part about it is that Stiles directly knows that Derek will be able to tell that he's lying; further than that, he knows that Derek won't pry. If Stiles wants to keep some things to himself, that's his own personal choice. Derek's not going to use his super hearing to butt into things that Stiles doesn't want him to know about, and the spark knows that. 

“You would tell me if it were something serious -” he presses his fingers more firmly into Stiles' skin, a gentle scent-mark. “Right?” 

Stiles smiles at him, all benign and so very unlike him. “Of course.”

\----

Pack emergencies aren't a constant occurrence around Beacon Hills. There's not _usually_ zombies lurking in the Wal-Mart parking lot, and there aren't _usually_ rogue omegas killing people and dragging them off into the woods to bury them in shallow graves. It's just that _sometimes_ shit like that happens around here – it's enough that those who take issue with that sort of thing (almost being eaten alive, and the like) stay far, far away and leave the rest to the crazies. Why do you think BH has the highest population of sparks and wolves in the state of California?

Too many weak-willed humans steer clear, while it's a – you know. _Beacon_ for wolves and the magically inclined. 

The point is, it's not usual, but – it's not surprising when it happens either. After so many times of such occurrences, the pack developed a very helpful chart of sorts; the _When To Call For Back Up_ chart that is enforced pretty strictly by Derek most of all. It became pretty apparent that they needed one when Scott called and declared a pack emergency and Derek rushed over to his apartment to find him alone with an entire pizza and some wolfsbane beers, saying the emergency was him not having anyone to drink with. 

Now, they have a chart. 

If it's mid-day and the person you're trying to call is at work, can you do it on your own? Is this something the police should handle? Is this a task for the fire department? Is it past midnight? Can you call anyone else? Is this life or death? Are you hurt right now? It's pretty detailed. 

The most important of all of these is that the only time anyone ever calls Derek when he's surely asleep is if it's an absolute complete and total emergency, no one else can be called, he's the last resort and it's desperate, dire. So he doesn't get woken up at two am as often anymore. In fact, he'd say it hasn't happened in years. 

So, when he gets rudely awoken at exactly 2:16 AM by his phone vibrating angrily on his bedside table, when he glares out into the darkness to see Scott's name flashing on his phone screen – he panics near instantaneously. 

“Scott?” He answers quickly, voice still sleep laden and raspy. “Are you -”

“Derek,” it's not Scott's voice that he hears on the other end of the phone. It's Allison Argent's, without a doubt. “Derek, thank _God_.” 

In the background, he can hear running. She's panting, hard, and it's not just her footsteps he can barely make out over the weak reception from the cell phone. There's another set, moving quicker, ahead of her a pace or two, heavier. Probably Scott, if she's calling from his phone. He adds all this up in his head, can't piece it together to make sense. Allison Argent calling him from Scott's phone at two o'clock in the morning; that just doesn't ring right in his mind. 

“We need your help – oh God -” there's more crunching, someone's voice in the background, Scott yelling.

“What's going on?” He demands, throwing his covers off, flicking on a bedside lamp. 

“It's -” more heavy breathing, “-it's Stiles.” 

Derek freezes in the middle of looking for his shoes. Because - “Stiles?” 

“He's – he's in bad shape,” she starts muttering under her breath. She sounds a lot like she's in shock, going on a tirade directed mostly at herself like _came out of nowhere_ and _tried to stop it_ and _can't believe this is happening_ , and Derek has to interrupt her, has to get to the fucking bottom of this because – it - 

It can't be _Stiles_. Stiles can't be in bad shape. Stiles can't be the reason – he can't be in trouble. 

Stiles can fend off entire packs of wolves with one swing of his baseball bat. Stiles can produce fire out of his fingertips. Stiles doesn't need Derek looking after him, doesn't need anyone looking after him, he can handle himself, he can always...

“Where are you?” He rises from the bed on shaky legs after shoving his feet into his sneakers haphazardly.

Allison starts crying; running and crying and more of Scott yelling in the background, Derek feeling like he wants to punch a hole through his god damn wall for how useless he feels right now. “Allison. Where – are – you.” 

“We're...God, we're going to – Lydia's house. Scott said -” 

“Okay,” he says, and he's moving out his bedroom door, down the hallway, pulling his keys off their designated hook, “okay. Good. Go to Lydia's.” He'll be safe at Lydia's. No matter what happens, if Derek takes too long getting there, if something goes wrong, if he crashes his car, then Lydia can handle it. “I'm coming there, now.” 

“Okay,” she's crying some more, and Derek is outside his house with shaking fingers as he clicks the unlock button on his keys. “I think he might be -”

“I'm coming,” he doesn't want to know what Stiles _might be_. He doesn't want to hear whatever word she had to say, whatever word she thinks she can ascribe to Stiles right now. Not until he sees it for himself. Not until he can put his hands on Stiles and fucking _do something_ about it. 

He hangs up on her, gets into his car, grips the wheel.

He gives himself a grand total of five seconds. 

One – Stiles is a spark, and he's probably going to be fine.

Two – he's powerful, and he's probably going to be fine.

Three – there is every chance, every chance in the world, that he _won't_ be fine.

Four – he's probably imagining something worse than it really is.

Five – he has to be fine. He _has_ to be. 

After his five seconds is up, he starts the engine. 

He manages to pull up outside of Lydia's house out in the woods right at the exact same time that he hears three heartbeats moving around in the woods, but only two sets of footfalls running. He climbs up out of his car, and Lydia throws open her front door (in her pajamas, barefoot, hair a mess, worried look all over her features), and Derek doesn't know what else to do except stand there and wait for them to get closer. 

Running to meet them wouldn't make any bit of different, he doesn't think. 

The first heartbeat is rabbit quick and clearly human – Allison. 

The second is more controlled, measured, heightened from normal but not nearly as quick as the other's – Scott's. 

And the last is slow. Disturbingly slow. The breaks in-between each beat are too long. He doesn't have to be a doctor to cuss that one out for himself. 

Derek climbs up onto the porch beside Lydia, stares out into the trees. She purses her lips at him, with those same frightened wide eyes. She doesn't offer anything like _he'll be okay_ up to him. She doesn't say _I'm sure it's nothing_. 

It clearly isn't nothing. It's two o'clock in the morning and Allison Argent is fucking crying and Stiles' heartbeat is almost at dead. It's clearly something. Pretending like it isn't would only make things worse, in the long run, and Lydia respects Derek too much to do that to him. 

Finally, after what must only be a minute but feels like hours, fucking days, Scott comes barreling into the clearing, running as fast as he physically can. Stiles is limp in his arms, his arms dangling uselessly in the air, legs perched up at the knees underneath Scott's left arm; and at the sight of this, at the sight of _that_ , Derek thinks he might black out for a second. He thinks he might just lose some time, like his mind is trying to protect himself from this, shielding him, doesn't want to let him see this shit. It doens't make sense to see Stiles like that. 

When he comes back to, Allison is breaking out into the clearing now, a full twenty feet behind Scott – huffing and puffing and trying to keep up to the best of her human abilities. For a human, she's actually pretty quick; she might've been running even faster when she first, started, but they've obviously been running for a long time, and she looks exhausted, pushing herself to her absolute physical limit just to chase after Scott and Stiles as hard as she can. 

Scott slams up the steps, barrels past Derek and Lydia to get inside the house like the most imperative thing he could do is get Stiles inside, away from something, safe in the confines of a house before anything else can happen. 

Allison is tottering along, but Derek is already following Scott inside, following the scent of blood and sweat and pain and that's – that's Stiles. 

_Stiles_ smells like pain. It's a bitter, harsh scent that has Derek on edge, has him feeling like getting his claws out and tearing something to shreds. 

“What happened?” Lydia hisses right as Allison storms inside, panting so hard she sounds like she's having an attack, collapsing down onto her knees in the foyer and backing up against the wall. Stiles' baseball bat was in her hand, and now just clatters to the floor, rolling off past Lydia's feet to smack against the wall. Scott doesn't bother pulling Stiles in to the living the room, doesn't bother putting him on the couch. He just drapes the spark gently across the hardwood floor, starts pawing at his face, saying, _Stiles, Stiles, can you hear me?_

Stiles doesn't respond. 

“It was -” Allison starts up, right as Derek is sliding to his knees across from Scott and right up against Stiles' side, taking stock of him. “It was one of those – things.” 

Stiles is barely breathing. Or, he's trying too _hard_ to breathe. It doesn't sound like pants, like Allison's, and it doesn't sound like anxious tufts of breath, like Scott's; it sounds forced. Like something has got a hand around his neck, squeezing around his wind pipe so he can barely catch the amount of oxygen he needs to keep on surviving. Chopped, heavy. Wet. 

“What things?” Lydia prompts – she's hovering over the human, using her calm voice that she usually uses to keep a member of the pack from going off the deep end. Good thing, too, because Allison – she looks about ready to leap. 

“It just came out of nowhere, like it was _nothing_ ,” she covers her face with her hands, scrubs at her eyes and shakes her head again and again like she's trying to pull herself together. 

Long scratch marks mar up Stiles' stomach and chest, up to his neck and across one of his cheeks, oozing red blood all over Scott and Derek's hands, into his torn up t-shirt. Derek grabs at Stiles' hand on instinct, and the thing hangs limply within his own – cold and detached, like he can't even move his god damn fingers, he's so weak.

When has Stiles ever been weak? It's so wrong, so backwards, so fucked up that Derek almost can't fully process that the half-dead person in front of him is really him. 

“Stiles couldn't get it off of him, and it – it got it.” 

“Got what?” 

Stiles' eyes are half-open, staring blankly up at the ceiling, unseeing. He doesn't even seem to know that Derek is here, that Scott's here, where he is right now. But Derek has got a pretty good guess that he's hyper-fucking-aware that he's dying, right now, on a hardwood floor in the middle of the woods, hands shaking in pain that Derek can't fucking leech out because the magic will kill him if he tries for more than a second. Stiles knows he's dying, and he _knows_ that there's not much time left, now. 

Allison reaches down beside herself, pawing around at a bag she has slung over her shoulder – still sniffling but trying to stop, desperately, like she's trying to be better than that, or something. Tougher. 

“Stiles?” Derek prompts, squeezing onto his limp hand tighter, leaning down over his face. “Stiles.” He wraps his free fingers around the spark's face, tugs it to try and get those eyes to see him – but they just stare straight through him. Void. 

The same way it was back at Kate Argent's house, when he...

...and that's when it hits him. 

The fact that only one thing could render a spark so useless, like this. The mysterious scratch marks and bruises from weeks prior. Derek had suspected as much, had spoken out loud to Lydia that he thought that Stiles was getting hounded by those things, and he didn't put two and two together last night when Stiles was acting so skittish. 

He should've known better. He never should've left Stiles alone, he should've seen the signs that were so glaringly fucking obvious that Stiles was in serious god damn trouble and - 

“They got his spark,” Derek hisses. “They took his spark, holy shit, holy shit, _Stiles_ ,” and he pulls Stiles' limp hand up against his chest, because if he doesn't have his spark...there's only minutes, maybe, until Stiles -

“No,” Allison interrupts him right before he starts _howling_ in misery, and she spills the contents of her bag across the floor. Lipstick, spare change, what looks like a pocket knife, old movie tickets, and - 

Stiles' spark. It just flops to the ground like a purple ooze, rolling for a second before coming to a stop and flickering in and out, in and out, like a lamp post that needs its bulb changed. It tries moving itself towards where Stiles is splayed out, jostles just a little bit, vibrates, until it gives up and then sits there, dimming. 

It tries again, gives up, gets almost imperceptibly dimmer.

"I killed that thing before it could - um...." Scott trails off, shaking his head like he's remembering something truly horrifying. "...eat the spark." 

Derek hasn't ever seen one of the soul-suckers. A picture, maybe, in a book - they're grey skinned and bulbous eyed, huge shark-like teeth in a mouth so huge it could probably fit a football in there. The thought of one of those things getting anywhere _near_ Stiles - trying to _eat_ his fucking spark...

“I can't touch it,” Allison says, fisting her hands in her hair as she stares at it. Lydia is staring at it too, wide-eyed like she can't fucking believe what she's seeing, flicking her eyes between it and Stiles' body on the floor. “I thought – we thought -” 

“Someone powerful,” Scott interrupts in a steadier tone of voice than Allison, nodding towards Lydia. “I can't touch that thing, either. It nearly took my head off.” 

No one's supposed to be able to touch a spark's spark. If a stranger tries to touch it, typically it'll go apeshit and try to literally blow the offender up or set them on fire, skittering away to climb back inside their host or hide under a table somewhere. Humans can't touch it because it'll kill them on contact, if its powerful enough – but tonight, Stiles' purple glow ball is looking particularly out of sorts. It looks like it's about to go out at any second. But he bets it would use the very last of its power, the last of Stiles' power, to fend off a stranger trying to touch it. Trying to harm it, it thinks. 

Stiles is clearly too weak to work the mojo to retract it back into himself all on his own, and the spark can't make its way over to him all on its lonesome, not without someone to carry it over and force it inside of him. 

Lydia might be able to. She could use her alpha power to wrangle it into submission, shove it back down Stiles' throat and save his life before he dies on the floor. 

She doesn't take a second to deliberate it. Even if she doesn't trust or like Stiles, and even if she sees him as an interloper trying to break into her pack, she's not cruel. She couldn't watch a creature die right in front of her very eyes without at least trying to help him. 

She squats down, reaches her pale hand out, and tries scooping the spark up. 

It rolls away, as far as it can get from her hand before it can't take it anymore, blinking on and off pitifully as though it's about to shut off for good at any second. 

“Lydia...” Derek warns, clutching onto Stiles' hand and arm even tighter. 

She narrows her eyes, goes for a different approach. She cups her hands together, and tries scooping it up like a shovel. 

It lands in her hands this time, all right, but it retaliates. It buzzes, electrifying her hard enough that her hair stands up on ends, and she drops it with a screech. 

It tumbles to the ground hard, stutters its lights out, and for a second Derek thinks that's it. 

But, then, seconds later, it blinks back to life. A dull purple orb lying on the ground, no way to get back to its host. Trapped. About to go out. 

That's it, then. Lydia can't catch it either; just like Scott couldn't, and just like Allison couldn't. She stands back with her hands on her hips, as if she's accepting this fact. Her lips are set down in a grim line, her eyes shining like she's about to cry; she doesn't very much like the feeling of powerlessness. 

And Derek – he can't do anything. All he can do is rub his fingers up and down Stiles' arm, trying to _shh_ him as he breathes those harsh sounding breaths out through chapped, parted lips. He looks like death incarnate, right now, pale and sickly and half between life and death, bleeding all over Lydia's fancy floors and staring dully upwards at nothing in particular. 

It's the most horrible ten seconds of Derek's entire life. It's the worst thing he's ever had to do; is sit there, uselessly, watching Stiles die right in front of his eyes. 

But it's only ten seconds, before Scott juts his chin in Derek's direction and says, “you try.” 

Derek doesn't let himself hope. He strokes his fingers along Stiles' jawline, shakes his head. “If you couldn't do it, and an alpha couldn't, what makes you think -”

“Derek,” Scott interrupts in a hard voice. “Try.” 

The wolf glances down at Stiles. Stares at the freckles sticking out against the pale skin on his face, at the scratch marks and blood, the glazed set to his eyes. He looks so small, right now, so weak and helpless and desperate, and Derek hates it. Because that's not Stiles – that's not him at all. The life force has been sucked clean out of him by one of those fucking disgusting bottomfeeders that lurk around in the woods just waiting for someone like Stiles to prey on, and his only chance, his only hope at getting back is – apparently, Derek. 

And Derek's not letting himself hope. Everyone is looking at him, waiting. 

So, he huffs out a breath, loathe to let go of Stiles' hand, to drop it down limp by his side, as he rises to a standing position away from Stiles to approach the little purple orb where it's resting a few feet away from Allison's feet warily. 

It blinks on and off in an uneven pattern, like it's trying to keep itself alive, but Derek knows it can't survive for a very long time without being put back inside of its host's body. It's grasping at nothing. 

The wolf frowns, squats down in front of it, and holds his hand out. He drops the knuckles of his fingers down onto the ground, making a tiny little ramp out of his hand for it to shuffle up onto if it wants to. He has no pretenses of believing that it does – he doesn't think for even a fraction of a second that this will actually work. The thing doesn't even like Stiles' _best friend_ , so the odds of it climbing into Derek's hand out of its own free will, or even the odds of it going against its will without electrocuting him the same it did Lydia, are basically slim to none. Emphasis on the _none_. 

There are a couple moments where the only sounds are Stiles' wrecked breathing from behind him, and he hates the fact that he's not back there with him to see him through it. Hates the fact that he's wasting his time on something that's sure to not work. 

The spark blinks on and off, on and off, vibrating slightly. Derek shuffles his hand closer, just slightly, until his longest finger is less than an inch away from where it's resting and it – doesn't move away. Just sits there. 

Until it does move. It pulses for a moment, brightening, before nudging itself against Derek's fingers gently. 

Derek jerks at the touch. It feels – warm. 

“He recognizes you,” Allison's voice says, and she sounds awestruck, positively fucking shocked out of her mind, but Derek can't tear his eyes off of the spark as it fumbles its way over Derek's fingers to rest inside the palm of his hand. 

It sits there, and Derek can't think he can describe how it feels. Most of it is how soft it is, for a tiny little ball of light – it's smooth, too, like satin rolling over his skin, and warm like linens fresh out of the dryer or a patch of carpet that's been sitting in the sunlight. But there's also the fact that this is – essentially – Stiles that he's holding in his hands, right now. Most of what makes Stiles _Stiles_ , his essence, his _soul_. 

Just resting in the palm of his hand. He can't believe it. He waits for it to electrify him, burn him, do something to him – but it doesn't. It waits. 

Like it trusts him to do what it needs him to. 

Derek wishes he had more time to savor it, more time to just sit there and soak in the fucking feeling it gives him, but he doesn't have that. He rises jerkily, unsure of himself, hyper-aware that there's a very fragile thing in his hand right now and dropping it would probably not be a very good idea – it might get mad at him, also – and walks in careful, easy steps over to where Stiles is lying and waiting for him. 

He drops back down to his knees beside him, across from a wide-eyed, dropped jaw Scott, and says, “What do I – how -” how is he supposed to do this? Last time he watched Stiles do it, the kid just sucked the thing right back into the palm of his hand. From the way he looks now, he's betting Stiles just can't do that at the moment. 

Scott shakes himself of his shocked daze, reaches his tan fingers downwards to wrench Stiles' mouth open wider. Stiles shifts slightly underneath his rough touch, legs jerking minutely and neck trying pitifully to crane itself out of his grasp, to no avail. 

Derek takes one last look at the spark in his hand, doesn't see any other fucking option. 

He dunks the purple orb down into Stiles' open mouth – Scott wrenches his lips closed, and Derek holds his palm over it to make sure it doesn't get out, somehow. 

There's a second, maybe two, and then Stiles starts choking. 

Full body jerking, hands reaching up to curl around Derek and Scott's arms like he wants them to let go of him, and Derek starts to say something like _maybe we should_ – but is cut off by Allison's firm command of _leave him!_

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. 

Stiles bolts upright, gasping so long and loud it sounds like he'd just been submerged underneath a pool of water for hours and is only just now coming up for air. At the same exact time, a wave of energy like a fucking forcefield shoots out from his body, sending Scott and Derek flying to opposite ends of the room, bashing into the walls, leaving cracks and dents underneath the strength of the push and the weight of their bodies. 

While Derek groans and pulls himself away from the wall to rest on his knees, Stiles keeps on gasping for air, panting, and panting, holding himself up with one hand braced behind himself, clutching at his heart like he's surprised to feel it beating in his chest again. 

Color rises up into his cheeks. His wounds still bleed, since he can't heal himself even with the magic, but they're nothing more than cuts, really, surface level flesh wounds. His eyes, no longer dead and void but alive and searching, dart all around the room like he's not sure where he is, looks at Scott and seems surprised, looks at Lydia and seems even more surprised, looks at Derek and....

He flips himself over to crawl with the tips of his toes and the palms of his hands towards where Derek is kneeling in front of the huge crack he put in the wall. His limbs scatter along with him awkwardly like they're still shaky from being half dead for a while there, but he manages to crawl across the floor like a crab, and Derek holds his arms out in anticipation, and Stiles just - 

Crashes into him. Wraps his arms around the wolf's neck so tight it almost hurts, sends him reeling right back into the wall all over again, before he even has a chance to put his own arms around Stiles. 

He nuzzles into Derek's neck, taking deep, shaking breaths, clutching onto him for dear life while Derek tries to regain his balance. “Derek,” he breathes out into the skin of the wolf's shoulder. 

“Hey,” Derek says in a half laugh while he finally manages to put his own arms around Stiles' middle, tugging him close. “Hey, hey, it's okay – you're shaking, just -”

“I almost -” he chokes out, squeezes harder. “I almost – and you -” he nuzzles deeper into Derek, burying himself there, almost, like he wants to melt into him. 

Derek looks over the spark's shoulder to see Scott and Lydia and Allison, all three of them standing there in the wake of every thing that's just happened, watching this little reunion go down with varying facial expressions. 

“I felt like I was never going to come back,” he shudders, and Derek can smell the salty musk of tears, starts to feel them dampening the shoulder of his shirt, the skin of his neck. “I felt – so scared – and -”

“Yeah,” Derek scrubs a hand down his back, “It's done, now, you're fine, you're okay.” 

There's a pause, where Stiles sniffles and inhales deeply around a sob. “You saved my life.” 

He did. Unbelievably, Derek _did_. 

Derek pulls back from Stiles just slightly, enough that he can prop Stiles' head up to look him in the face, into his eyes. Stiles is crying, all right, tears flowing freely from his amber eyes, lower lip trembling, cheeks ruddy and red – still better than how he looked earlier. “You trust me enough to touch your spark.” It's important. Needs to be acknowledged.

Stiles sniffles, shrugs his shoulders. “I didn't have control over that.” 

And the wolf just nods, up and down, with a smile on his face. “I know, Stiles.” 

Unwittingly, without question, without needing to double check, without awareness, Stiles trusts Derek with that part of himself implicitly. And that – that speaks volumes louder than if Stiles had done anything explicitly. 

This time when glances up over Stiles' shoulder, he catches Lydia's eye, and finds something different there. She's eyeing them both quizzically, watching the scene unfold before her, listening to the words they're saying, and the gears are turning in her head. Adding up all the variables, coming to a conclusion that Derek possibly doesn't even have yet. 

Something Derek doesn't even have a _name_ for, yet.

\----

“How come you didn't tell me about that? I could've – helped you, you know. Before it got so bad, I could've helped you.” There were signs, of course, now that Derek has his wits about him – because hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it? Stiles' shifty, anxious behavior from time to time, glaring out into the woods like he was expecting an attack, calling Derek and asking him to come over because he was lonely.

Stiles closed his eyes and leaned his head back into Derek's shoulder from his spot on the couch, Steven the magic rock probably watching them with whatever eyes he'd managed to sprout since getting struck by Stiles' spark. He huffed out a sigh and twiddled his fingers in his lap, before shrugging his own shoulders up and down. “I don't like asking for help.” 

As a spark, he wouldn't. 

It's funny that _lone wolf_ is a saying and a cliché, really more ironic than funny, actually. Because within the realm of werewolves, there really aren't any lone wolves. You find a pack, sometimes more than one, and you stick together. Wolves always have someone to watch their back, always have someone they can call in the event of an emergency – a wolf who tries to wander on their own would be foolish and idiotic, and more likely than not, any packs who would stumble upon a “lone wolf” would try and convince it to join them. Strength in numbers, and all that. 

For Stiles – that's just not how it works. He doesn't get the concept of having someone there to watch his back, has convinced himself time and time again that he can do whatever he needs to on his own, can handle anything. Even with the blackened scars on his back from the last time he tried to believe that he was invincible, he still tries to do too much on his own. 

Derek accepts this attitude, for now. But he'll be planning on making pretty active changes to it in the weeks, months, hopefully years to come. 

Of course, Lydia doesn't just instantly let Stiles into the pack. Of course she doesn't. That would be much, much too easy for her sky high standards and ridiculous hoops. She likes to watch people work for it, likes to watch people prove themselves worthy of the honor of being invited to join ranks with the likes of hers. 

She does, at least, stop eyeballing him like she's waiting for him to destroy everything she holds dear. She also lets him tag along to pack events, including the monthly picnic outing. Even though it clearly bothers her when Stiles spends the entire time sending wisps of white petals floating her way with a flick of his wrist, glowing his eyes purple and levitating loaves of bread and cans of soda, she bears it with little more than prim glares and silent chewing of her food. 

It's only a matter of time before she accepts the fact that Derek's not going to grow bored of his shiny spark any time soon, rolls her eyes, and lets Derek give him the pack-mark. Only a matter of time. 

Stiles still makes all his money from peddling those ridiculous cupcakes and brownies to humans at the farmer's market, which doesn't seem at all a legitimate way to make a living, barely seems like it would cover even half of what rent would cost at his tiny blue house; when Derek asks him about this one day, where the _Hell_ he gets all his fucking money from, Stiles just shrugs his shoulders, leans back in the passenger seat of Derek's car, and says, “I have my ways.” 

He probably loves the fact that Derek immediately thinks _car heists, bank robberies, drug cartels_ , loves the fact that it's probably something innocuous and stupid and barely magic related at all, loves that Derek is going to tear his hair out until he figures out what the Hell it is. Like how he still doesn't know whether or not Stiles can teleport (he's never physically _seen_ Stiles go up into a cloud of smoke only to reappear some odd twenty feet away, but he strongly _suspects_ that he can), and how he still doesn't know what the Hell he ever saw in Derek's doofy next door neighbor, still doesn't know what spark school was really like. 

It's just stupid things. Tiny little details that Stiles likes to hoard to himself only because it keeps Derek guessing and Stiles _loves_ to keep people guessing. Maybe Derek likes it a little bit too; that air of mystery Stiles insists on cloaking himself in. Like one of those calenders at Christmas time, where you peel the doors back to reveal a new snack or treat every single day; each day, Derek learns something new about Stiles, something else he's capable of, and it's just as enticing as it is the first time he saw Stiles flick his fingers at the bar that night, pulling a pen out of thin air. 

Plus. All the things that he really needs to know, all the things that are important and that _matter_...Stiles never has any problem telling him about those. Not anymore, at least; not since the last time he tried to play fast and loose with what Derek does or doesn't need to know nearly got him killed in the middle of the woods. 

When Derek asked Scott what the Hell he and Allison Argent were doing together to begin with, how it wound up being those two that were in the woods with Stiles that night when he got attacked, the other beta sheepishly admitted that he had been seeing her for a little while behind Derek's back, that he didn't want to tell him because – weird, right? Apparently, that's a secret Stiles was keeping as well, the fact that the three of them had been hanging out together for quite some time without Derek having any clue about it either which way. It – _annoyed_ him that two of the people closest to him felt the need to hide something so fucking stupid from him, but...it was an innocuous enough omission that he just rolled his eyes and said _whatever_. 

Besides, he sort of owes Scott a debt of favor; he's assured Derek time and time again that he killed the magic-sucker that nearly killed Stiles, ripped its throat out and coated a whole bunch of trees with greenish oozing blood. Good thing, too – because Derek definitely would've gone out to the woods himself to track that thing down and tear it limb from limb all on his own. 

Allison doesn't bother him. Not at all. Even with her relation to a fairly shitty time in his life, she's nothing like Kate. She laughed out loud when Stiles told her the story of breaking into the woman's house and ripping up her clothing, like it brought her great joy to hear of her aunt's misfortunes. 

Stiles has been put through the whole meeting the pack thing by Derek. And he also went through at least the _start_ of meeting the actual family thing when Cora and Laura harangued him at the farmer's market that one day way back when – so he insisted that it was time he drag Derek in to meet his father. Which Derek refused, at first. 

“Maybe we should put it off,” he had said, scratching nervously at the back of his neck. “Just – wait a while.” 

“Why?” Stiles demanded around a mouth full of french fries, a slushie resting in the cup holder in between them (Pina Coloda, oranage Fanta, blue raspberry). His lips were starting to turn a dark blue, making him look vaguely ridiculous and child like. 

“Well -” Derek hesitated, glaring out through the windshield to stare into the parking lot they were parked in. “Don't you think he'll put two and two together about the whole...” he waved his hand in the air, “...Kate thing?” 

Stiles laughed, long and hard, almost choking on a fry. Derek didn't really get the humor in the entire thing; the Sheriff could be hounding their asses for ten of thousands of dollars worth of property damage if he figured that shit out, and Stiles was just sitting there laughing about it. Derek set his jaw and glared at the side of the his face, about to start in on one of his Derek rants as Stiles has started calling them – but then the spark went and threw a curve ball at him. “Oh, he figured that out weeks ago.” 

Derek, alarmed, dropped his haradass facial expression and replaced it with something more akin to horror. “What?” 

“Yeah,” he shrugged his shoulders, popping another fry into his mouth. “Kate, like, knew it was me the entire time – the perceptive bitch – but I paid all the fines and stuff myself already, didn't mention your name, so you're off the hook.” 

Incensed, Derek threw his hands up into the air, and shouted in the tiny confines of the car, “ _where are you getting your fucking money from?_ ” 

In the end, it didn't matter either way. 

Derek is sitting across from the Sheriff at the kitchen table in Stiles' childhood home. There's a baseball game playing on the television in the background, that Stiles' father isn't even pretending to watch but that Derek is staring at with rapt attention, while the Sheriff stares at the side of his face with a frown so deep it looks like it should fall off his face straight onto the ground. 

The opening conversation when Derek first stepped into the house was _and how did you two meet?_

Stiles, without batting a single fucking eyelash, launched into the story about him taking a god damn baseball bat to neighbor Chris's house, Derek running out to break up the fight assuming they were both human, while the Sheriff just stood there pinching the bridge of his nose and shaking his head – like this is just yet another variation of the same story he's heard about a zillion times since Stiles was old enough to walk. 

He thankfully, at least, didn't mention anything about friends with benefits and the bar and blowjob coupons – but in the dead silence after Stiles finishes his story, the two of them lock eyes with each other, smirking as though they're both thinking of the same exact thing. How funny it is that everything can turn out so differently from how it was when it all started, how two people can change each other without even noticing that they're doing it. 

Stiles himself cited something about an old sweatshirt he wanted to fish out of his bedroom while he's here, and then vanished up the steps, leaving Derek alone to get grilled by his father. Typical. 

It's silent for another few seconds while Derek watches a strike out, and then across from him, a throat is clearing. 

“You're a werewolf?” 

“Yes.” Pause. “Sir.” 

“Hm.” 

Another pause. Silence. The sound of something falling to the floor upstairs followed by a curse. 

“I hear you saved my son's life.” 

“Not alone,” he confesses, shifting his eyes away from the television screen to glance in the other man's direction. “I had help.” 

“Hm.” 

Another pause. Silence. Derek thinks about standing up to run upstairs like he's going to help Stiles do whatever the Hell it is he's doing up there – seriously, how fucking long does it take to go and grab a sweatshirt? 

“You know,” the Sheriff is starting up again, and Derek sighs internally, preparing himself for a fatherly speech. “My son has a bit of a habit of getting himself into trouble.” 

Derek's lips quirk at the corners. “I've been caught in the tail end of some of that myself, before.” 

Stilinski rubs at his face for a second, eyeballing Derek with a level of intensity that is specifically reserved for father's when appraising their kids' significant others. “But he's a good kid. Smart. Loyal. Sometimes to a fault.” 

Derek is well aware of that. Knows that maybe better than the Sheriff realizes. 

“He's just -” he lowers his voice, leans forward over the table. Derek can hear Stiles' footsteps as they creak along the hallway, coming back towards the stairs. “...out of the box. He's not exactly _routine_ , even for a spark. Do you know what I mean?” 

Stiles clambers down the steps, waving a bright red hoodie around in his hand happily. “Found it!”

The thing stinks of magic, and not just in a _a spark has worn this a lot_ type of way. But in the same way that Steven the rock reeks of magic; like it's half alive itself, thrumming with the stuff, ready to launch itself across the room and wrap its cloth arms around Derek's neck to choke him out. He has a right to be wary of things that smell like magic, where Stiles is concerned, after all. Sometimes late at night in Stiles' house, he swears he hears that rock _talking_ ; when he shakes Stiles awake and tells him as such, the voice down the hall quiets, and Stiles grumbles that he doesn't hear anything and goes right back to sleep.

Steven the rock is trying to _gaslight_ Derek. So lord fucking only knows what the mystical red hoodie is going to put him through. 

And the Sheriff is right – Stiles isn't _routine._ Not at all.

**Author's Note:**

> and I want to say this super important thing - I am literally a bag of trash on a hot day in the sun about responding to comments I am TRASH!! I feel bad giving excuses or w/e but literally I check my ao3 inbox as a break MOSTLY in-between doing something else (like, for example, writing 8 page papers or studying for finals or something else horrible bc I live for comments and it gives me a happy in times of trouble) so I read a comment and get emo about it and then go right back into whatever horrible thing I was doing and like...forget lmao. 
> 
> I wanted to point this out because! I really appreciate comments! Like live for them! I would eat them for sustenance if I could! Print them out and devour them! But I'm just a fucko about answering them Idk why I'm a memory headcase I really don't know why please forgive me :( I know some fic writers could give a fuck but it genuinely bothers me when I forget to respond to comments, and I want everyone who's ever commented on one of my fics to know that even if I forgot to answer it I appreciated it haha. Writing fic is a labor of love filled with a lot of insecurities and "am I writing this well enough" and "is that realistic" and "is that out of character" and "wtf am I even tALKING ABOUT" (all of it mostly at three am when I should've been asleep already), so comments and feedback are literally so important to me. It keeps me going you know what I'm saying? 
> 
> Anyway I'm done now blah blah I talk so much thank you for reading!!


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